I'm the lady who mass planted some Knockout Roses on an ocean estate early summer.

Then planted 20 rambling roses, per your suggestions (thank you!) on granite boulders in mid Aug. They are doing great and even put on some blooms early fall.

Now I am wondering what I should do for winter protection.

Odd place. On the ocean means high winds at times. On the ocean means later fall and later spring.

What might you suggest for protection, if any, for the knockouts that will get the wind and what do you do about those ramblers that are sprawling all over the ground and rocks which will get snow cover sporatically?

These are open to ocean.



These are protected - back of house and inbetween boulders but that also will cause snow cover to melt and days of hot off the boulders and cold at nite.




This is only 3 of 20 ramblers




The rest are amongst these boulders

As a child I lived in Massachusetts. There were roses growing near the sea on Cape Cod. No one protected them - but they were not newly planted. I Hope someone else can be more helpful.

It looks like your project is coming along very nicely! I enjoy seeing it at this stage.

I lived in Rockport for four months one spring. I was doing computer programming work at the time and my only connection to nature was to take walks and drives to see what was growing in peoples' gardens from the sidewalks and roads. I found that part of the coast to be an almost magical spot in spring.

My SWAG is that with adequate mulching (two inches or so?) the roses will be fine. I'm pretty sure Knockouts and wichurana ramblers will be cold hardy to at least zone 5, so they should not freeze to death. I think the greatest fear might be desiccation, although it seems to me that humid sea-breezes during the winter would actually tend to keep that from happening. If weather is exceptionally dry in March and April when the roses start to set leaves, check to make sure that the soil is still moist. Maybe give them a little Mills Magic or some other organic fertilizer at about the same time. Again, you planted some of the tougher and more vigorous rose cultivars to be found; not growing could prove the least of your worries.

What I've read you can do with the roses is do a "Minnesota Tip" - dig a trench at least 6" deep & as long as the cane, lay the canes into the trench, then cover the canes up with dirt, then with more mulch. A lot of work & a big pain in the butt. Me personally, I just cover the base of the rose with a ton of mulch (minimum of 4-6") and just realize that I'll have winterkill on the exposed part of the cane. As long as the bud union or roots are well protected from the winds / freeze, you should be just fine. Another thing if you're worried about losing the length of the cane is to lay the canes down, cover with straw, then put burlap over that & weigh it down with rocks until the snows cover it. That would protect them too - but I'd be afraid in your area of harboring lots of buggies.

Thank you, and for varied advise so far.

Some of those canes on the ramblers have already grown 10 ft! Since I am training (staking) them over the boulders (not seen in pics) I WAS wondering about how hardy they might be their first year here.

My babies!

I can't see me trenching them as this is not my own garden and is suppose to be an easy care estate rental place! I was though kinda wondering if I needed to cut the long canes back.

So, am I safe to say that I should bring in several bags of compost / humus / manure / pine bark mulch (which I see as adding no nutrients) and put them around the base of the plant. And do nothing about burlap (please, please, please!) around the Knockouts?

Just over the driveway, 2 knockouts got knocked out 2 years ago. They are barely lingering on. But then, I did NOTHING to help them over the winter. Same ocean/windy conditions. And they want me to replace all 16 roses there next year. Varied, supposedly hardy varieties that I planted a dozen years ago. Bonica, Carefree Beauty, etc.

Thank you for your help.

Knock Outs are supposed to be tough...

erk

If Knockouts didn't make it, then maybe some of the Canadian Explorer series or the Bucks roses would do better? I have yet to see a Knock Out being killed by cold here and I get some awfully dry winds here off of the mountains.. makes your hands crack & bleed so drying!! You'll lose the top part of the canes.. to be expected. Expect to lose about 1/3 to 2/3rds of the canes due to cold. Most of my roses die down to the ground here, but I expect that.

Bobbie, even if they do die back some, they will regrow even faster next year. Really, I wouldn't do anything to protect them if you have planted them in decent soil to begin with.
I mulch mine, but for some, the mulch just blows off in our high winds, and they still grow beautifully come spring.
For the new areas, you might look into Champlain and John Davis.

Good compost added soil to 8-9 inches and turned in.

You are all encouraging. My concern is, of course, the rough conditions. Tried to pick hardy things.

I'll continue to watch this thread and will let you know how I make out.

It is possible that there will be some loss over the winter just as there can be over the summer from drought or from a dog digging up a plant, but I think it is very unlikely that frost will kill all these roses over the winter, assuming they've been in place and growing well since April or May. Spring in the NE is a slow, steady, gentle process in comparison to spring on the plains; at the same latitude it starts earlier and finishes later. I think these roses will get a better start with their canes in the air and sunlight.

Knockouts and Dorothy Perkins are cold hardy to zone 4b. This bit of seacoast must be zone 6a, at least. With the ocean so close you can hear it, I think that only some extremely unusual weather, could cause a significant problem. In Toni's zone 5 garden I'd bet those cultivars on their own roots would be fine more than nineteen winters out of twenty. And if they did suffer from cane dieback, as Toni said, they should come back from the roots.

Toni, do you get cane dieback on Knockout and Dorothy Perkins? Or is it the hybrid tea roses and floribundas?

I'm sure I underestimate the difficulties of growing roses in Denver, but I did grow one or two tea roses in zone 6b with no special cultural practices, not even mulch. And the roses above are not tea roses.

I'm looking forward to the photos.

Sleep Well. And Good Luck.

Steve - Can't help you with either KnockOut or Dorothy Perkins... don't have either rose. Actually, I can't remember seeing DP .. probably because it's a pink rose & I tend to ignore pinks. I get the worst winterkill on the hybrids, not so bad on the climbers. I think I only have 1 OGR - Camaïeux - everything else I have is a modern rose (would a polyantha be a modern or a OGR? I also have Heinrich Karsch, which is a poly). It also depends on how much snow I get.. the more snow I have, the less winterkill I get (snow insulates). But, for the most part, almost everyone croaks down to the ground (see this thread for examples: The thread "My First Parade (JOKE!!)" in Roses forum I remember spring when I lived upstate NY.. there was an actual difference between winter & spring! Here, there's no difference.. we go straight from winter to summer, then straight into winter again with very little autumn. That's why I have to mulch so damned heavily. But it seems to work (not to mention it improves my soil SOOO much!!) so, if ain't broke, don't fix.

One truly great thing about the southern plains is the long lovely fall.