Woofie - I always plant the rose with the budunion or the budflare (if it's an own-root) at least 2" below ground, and then pile the dirt up around the canes so that only like 2-5" of canes are sticking up out of the ground, then put mulch on top of that. If it's a new rose planted late, I'll put a bottomless bucket (3gal plant bucket from like Home Depot that I cut the bottom off of) around the rose & fill it 100% with mulch. Did that last year with 2 roses I received from England and planted in November.. they were two of my better bloomers this year! Doris Tystermann (
http://www.helpmefind.com/rose...) and Summer Holiday (
http://www.helpmefind.com/gard...). If you look at some of the pictures I just put on my last parade, especially California Dreamin' , that's a 2 year old plant and is doing quite well (huge blooms). I'm going to say that at least half of my roses are zone 7s.. the rest are zone 6. I have very very very few zone 5s and I don't think I have any zone 3-4s (Canadian roses like the Meilands)
