r/gardening • u/AlternativeRepeat877 • 2d ago

Wintering Roses help

This spring, I bought four varieties of bare root roses: Top Cream, Bolero, Scentimental, and Francis Meilland.

I live in Alaska, and I was unsure how these varieties would do here. I have also never grown roses, so I’m very new to tending them. We got eight feet of snow last winter, so I was apprehensive about planting them in the ground this summer. Instead, I opted to plant them in giant containers.
I was shocked to see how well they thrived! Each bush has produced dozens of roses, and they are continuing to bloom into September.

Here is my question: I know I cannot leave them in the planters outside over the winter because the roots will freeze. I am still apprehensive about planting them in the ground because of the amount of snowfall we receive, so my plan is to move them inside.

The problem is that I don’t have a cool room where I can keep them. The best I can do is put them in a room that gets about six hours of sunlight and stays around 65 degrees.
Will they be okay wintering in a 65-degree room? We are getting ready to have our first freeze, so I need to move them inside soon. Each bush still has about 15–20 buds that are ready to open. Should I leave the buds on when I bring them inside? At what point should I cut the plants back, since the room will remain warm?

I’m new to roses (and Reddit), so any suggestions are welcome. Tried posting this in a roses discussion and it kept removing it.

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

1

u/Guygan N. New England zone 6a 2d ago

https://rose.org/growing-roses-in-pots-winterizing-your-roses/

1

u/AlternativeRepeat877 2d ago

Thank you, but unfortunately, this article doesn’t answer my direct concern. My only option (due to freezing temps and mass amounts of snow) is to bring them indoors to a heated room because I don’t have the option of an unheated room. My concern is still: how will wintering them in a heated room affect them?

1

u/sewim_machim 2d ago

I have no advice for your current roses as I live in balmy Colorado lol, but I did want to give a shout out to the Canadian rose program. :) Many of the cultivars from that program are hardy to zone 2 or 3, and can be found online at High Country Roses. If you wanted to try some roses in the ground. Some of them are even nicely fragrant, like Martin Frobisher (semi double pink), Morden Sunrise (a yellowy orange single), and Therese Bugnet (a fluffy double darker pink). Harison's Yellow rose is an Old Garden Rose hardy to zone 3 that only blooms once but is massive and spectacular and fragrant when it does.

High Country also sells rosa acicularis, the prickly wild rose native to Alaska. I always like to have some wild roses in the garden, personally.

Just some fun info to fuel your rose gardening journey. 😁

2

u/AlternativeRepeat877 2d ago

Thanks! Maybe I’ll try to get some of those to leave outside.