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Moving Roses...

Have you ever had to move a rose? Not just within a bed, but far from its bed?

When we bought our home and renovated it - the process took much longer than we anticipated and the gardens had to be moved in the fall because moving our indoor “stuff” would be when the ground was still frozen.

We dug up most of the roses - digging a wide swarth around the root to prevent cutting off too many small ones.

We put them into buckets and boxes to transport

- If you need to put them into a moving van, they would need better care - wrapping them to preserve moisture while protecting the stems and canes from getting broken.

For me, the biggest challenge was moving one

of my favourite roses:

The Fairy

About "The Fairy Rose"

PLANT COMMON NAME: The Fairy (also called Feerie, or Perle Rose)

BOTANICAL NAME: Rosa “The Fairy”

HISTORY: Introduced in 1932 by J.S. Bentall with parents of ‘Paul Crampel’ and “Lady Gay”; this lovely spreading, tough little dwarf shrub rose has many glorious small, double roses

PLANT TYPE: Polyantha rose

HARDINESS ZONE: 4 - 9

SUN or SHADE: full sun to part shade

SOIL TYPE: most soil types; needs little fertilization and good drainage. It will do well with slightly acidic soil.

FLOWER COLOUR: most common is pink, but there are some polyantha roses that are white - I have one called “Medlund”.

BLOOM TIME: June until frost

PLANTING: spring, summer (if not too hot) and fall - great for a hedge, or cascading over a wall or short fence.

CARE: mulch the first year, and keep moist

PRUNING: blooms on new wood so prune back to 6 inches above ground ONLY in spring

PESTS: resistant to black spot, mildew and rust.

Attracts butterflies and birds

TRIVIA: I cut back wherever a stem encroaches on another; they make gorgeous bouquets and dry well…. Retaining their glorious pink colour all winter.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: One of my favourite, easy to grow roses.

It's great in a border with tea roses as its spreading habit hides some of the bare stems.

TOLERANT to BLACK WALNUT ?

I doubt most roses (or cousin tomatoes) will tolerate Black Walnut…. at least not in my garden.

The challenge:

Its spreading habit and biting thorns, made it almost impossible to dig around. Even though it was almost 6 feet wide and nearly 4 feet tall, it was too early in the season to cut it back (roses need to be dormant for the best pruning) so I needed to find another way.

Our movers gave us a roll of plastic wrap - used for wrapping furniture or mattresses. Perfect.

We were gloved and prepared - she held up the outer branches of the bush while I began to encircle it with the plastic wrap.

Once the wrap started clinging to itself, it was a bit easier and I was easily able to pull the branches tighter together without breaking them.

I walked around the bush while wrapping it.

Once it was wrapped, we laid a piece of fabric on the ground and dug up the bush, placing the root on the fabric.

Get as much soil with the rose as possible - but in our case, this poor rose had been relocated only a year before so the root did not have as many side shoots as it would if in the ground longer...

We wrapped the root - mostly as it had to be transported in the backseat of my car.

Fortunately, we were moving just around the corner…. When you find a great neighbourhood, don’t leave !

TIP:

If your roses need to be out of the ground longer than a few hours, you will need moist moss or wet newspapers or even be put into bucket of moist soil to transport.

The longer the roots are out of the soil, the more care they will need when planted. The roots must not dry out.

My Fairy rose actually split and became two. I was distressed at first, but there were as many roots on both sides of the split, so I planted them both. They took. This rose is almost foolproof !