You probably need brush killer. Regular roundup will not kill a rose that suckers like that.

dig them all up and give away the babies. like puppies.

I agree with buford, you want something formulated for woody growth if you choose a chemical route. You can also choose to 'paint' the chemical on the unwanted plants to reduce overspray damage and actual chemical usage.

Otherwise you will have to go with a suggestion like the above poster: clear your bed and dig hard and deep.

You could try concentrated Roundup. Cut off the stems, then paint or pour the concentrated Roundup without diluting it onto the cut to kill the roots.

Oh boy! I am just so *mad* about this!!!! The gardener we hired worked on several beds around the house and did a good job, but her work really fell short on this one task! She never told me this would be an ongoing process. If she had said ANYTHING about it maybe not working, we would have just left the FLOWERING bush there. Now we are suck with ugly, no flowers suckers everywhere. Aaaaaahhhhh!

Well, *I* really do not want to pull everything out. But if it has to be done, could we take just the three grasses out (shown in the second picture, not quite the center of the old bush) and dig down. If we get the original root stock out, will the suckers die eventually? What if I follow up with pulling new suckers as I see them (as much as I can reach)? Will the darn thing give up eventually? On the other hand, will these suckers ever flower? None of them did last Summer.

Thanks.

Yes, the suckers will all flower, may take up to 3 years. What you've done by leaving them in is to stimulate them to save themselves by replicating ferociously. If you decide to try pulling them out, don't just grab and jerk as that will stimulate more growth. Get a shovel, dig below the roots and track them all the way through the soil without breaking them. From my own experience, patience runs very thin when you're running into extensive rooting systems and every so often I just hauled off and pulled in frustration. But if you keep at it, you can clear them out - you just have to get every single root surfaced and removed. I'd probably be calling that gardener back and give her the removal job... AFTER she guarantees her work. That would be worth some money! And now I'm really curious: what is that rose, anyway?

Sue

My guess is that it's a gallica, and the person who was/is doing this has absolutely no idea what she is up against. It doesn't look like rootstock.

To return to pre-landscaper days, do nothing. It may not bloom this year because of the possible Round Up damage from last year, but should bloom next year. However, because of the disturbance, it will probably end up as a considerably larger shrub than it had been. Whatever it is, it probably blooms on old wood, so any serious attempts to get rid of it will lead to a lot fewer flowers.

If you want to get rid of it, I'd recommend a combination of digging and Round Up, and expect it to take several years. There are roots that will grow beneath the surface and not be visible for a while. If one of those comes up in the middle of the grass, you have a problem.

Getting the genie back in the bottle isn't going to be easy on this one. Probably the easiest way to deal with this, is to take out the perennials, grass it over, and mow it for a couple of years. That will get rid of it. Anything else, you are going to miss pieces of it, and any one of those pieces may be able to become a substantial bush before you catch it. This is particularly true in a heavily planted mixed border where there are lots of hiding places.

I wish I knew what the original rose was. It had single pink flowers. I think I took a couple of pictures of it once. I'll have a poke around.

Hi mad gallica. Every post makes me more depressed! Anyway, this picture looks like what I remember the flowers looking like.

Here is a link that might be useful: Possible Old Rose Picture?

Here's the first photo I took of the bush when I went to look at the house before I bought it in 2005! It is at a different angle to the one above, but I think it looks like it grew a lot in the year between the two pics. Do you think?

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:259444}}

Hello all. I just wanted to give you all a quick update of my rose situation! I had a nice, but more expensive then I hoped, gardener come over to take a look. At first she thought we could keep the biggest part of the plant and let it try to revive itself and then just fight the little suckers coming up in unwanted spots around the bed. However, after she did some research, her recommendation was to dig it all out. We took out one of the grass plants and dug though as much of the open area of the bed as we could. We spent about 90 minutes digging 8-12" down and got out 20+ feet of quarter-inch roots! We did not get it all I am sure, but got a good portion of it. I am now either snipping, pulling or spraying little shoots that appear outside of the arer we were working. At some point I will probably have to pull out the lilies and irises in that bed to get more of the rose roots out.

Good- hope that works for you. Tough problem.

I'd be surprised if Round Up in the "Brush killer" strength doesn't do it. It's twice as storng as their heavy-duty concentrate and of course, the hand spray, pre mix stuff is like spraying water, compared to the Brush Killer kind.
Fertilome also makes a brush killer.
I had a miserable with succers from a blackberry bush. Nothing worked, not even digging--it seemed I always missed a few. But when I switched from regualar RU to a mixture that's specifically for killing brush, after a couple of sprays, no more rouge black berries. And even more surprising was the following spring, not a single new plant came up.
Check to see if the RU that was used was the "Brush Killer," at full strength.
If not, I'd try that. Of course, be prepared to have to clear out a lot of dead, stickers.

Check to see if the RU that was used was the "Brush Killer," at full strength.
If not, I'd try that. Of course, be prepared to have to clear out a lot of dead, stickers.

Provided that's a legal thing to do (there are EPA regs. about what can be used in what strengths, and where and when), that makes sense. At the end of the day roses are brambles, just as blackberries and raspberries are.

It's very, very easy to forget that if you grow the right roses, but if you grow the "other" roses, you can't ever forget that roses are brambles.

I am pretty sure the original RoundUp the gardener used when she revisited the second year was normal kind. It did very little. The problem now is dealing with the little suckers coming up *in* other plants. I've since attempted to pull or snip suckers hiding in the lilies or irises.

if you keep it weed eated or mowed they will eventually die off because they won't have any leaves to make food with.