Can't beat that snow cover for protection, but you are right--can't depend on the snow to stay around and do its job!

As long as you can level the soil line so that the extra soil doesn't run off the graft as the season progresses, I can't see why it would be a problem. I might just try raising the bed one inch at first and then later (like 6 months or a year) raising it another inch--just to be on the safe side? But maybe that is being overly cautious.

Another possibility is piling up some mulch or leaves to cover the graft. In Zone 6, it isn't really the cold that damages the rose (well, except last year which was a brutal winter here!) but more the freeze-thaw cycles that are too common in late winter/very early spring. Without the snow, the bush is open to damage. With mulch/leaves for protection, the freeze-thaw won't affect it so much.

In my zone 6, I just cross my fingers and let some of my neighbor's fallen oak leaves blow randomly throughout parts of my garden. Most years that is enough. I don't really worry much about hybrid teas and floribundas (grafted) since they do rather well getting a good pruning in the early spring--they bounce back with extra vigor! True, some years they have to be pruned down to a few inches from the ground, but that doesn't seem to stop them from spurting into spring growth and blooming like champs in May. Main difference I notice is that if the winter and thus the pruning were quite severe, the HT or floribunda doesn't grow back quite as tall as usual that season, but the shorter rose is still healthy and bloomiferous.

Hope that helps.

Kate

Own-root roses don't have grafts, bud unions, or anything else like that, so trying to protect a particular weak point isn't an option. If you bury an own-root plant, it will simply readjust itself to where it thinks it should be in relation to the soil line.

Older budded roses can develop crowns at the soil line if they have repeatedly died back to the ground and grown back from there. However, that means the bud union is buried a decent amount.

When I first started with roses, I read that in my zone (7) I shouldn't bury the graft, but have it two inches above the ground. However, last winter convinced me that the graft should be at soil level, with some winter protection. I don't want my grafted roses to go own root, because many of them will not do well own root. I am also going to try multiflora and fortuiana root stocks to see how those do. I have replanted roses that were in the ground for 10 years this spring. The grafts were getting big and ugly anyway.

Thanks to all for the responses!

mad_gallica, I was assuming that it was grafted onto its own more established rootstock. But I'm new to roses and don't really know what I'm looking at. Now that I'm thinking about it, all of the new growth came up this year from the soil line, which is just below that bulbous point that looks like a bud union (given how it was originally planted), so it could be that it did in fact re-adjust itself...or maybe if it was grafted, that part did die and the rootstock itself is the only part that survived to send up new canes. Hmm. I'll have to take another look at it, but now I'm thinking a layer of mulch as Kate suggested is the way to go.

Where did you get the plant? If from the garden center or a mass-marketer like Regan, it was probably grafted. If this year's new growth did not bloom this year, it is rootstock only and would bloom next May-June, and only once per year.

But to answer the original question, roses adapt easily to a change of grade, for example, adding 3" of soil.

Michael, it did come from Home Depot, and the new growth had 2 flushes of bloom this year.

I took a photo of Julia's bottom. The brown knobby part is what I assumed was the bud union, but maybe I'm just looking at the crown portion of an own root rose? I notice there are a couple of shoots coming from the top of it which I hadn't seen before.

It does look like a graft. The crown of an own-root rose would always be below grade. Some of the shoots appear to be coming from below the apparent graft, but you say they are blooming as 'Julia Child'. So I'm puzzled. There is one strong-looking shoot coming from above the apparent graft. Could that have been responsible for all the JC blooms? But it appears that the "graft" was injured in winter; otherwise most of the new growth would be coming from it rather than from below.

Most of the blooms came from the canes that emerged from below the apparent graft. I've read that occasionally grafted roses can become "own root" roses if given enough time in the ground for the graft to get established with its own root base and eventually take over the root stock. I'm wondering if maybe that's in the beginning stages of what's going on here as JC did have two growing seasons to get established before this last bad winter. Since you mentioned that a change in the grade probably won't hurt, I will go ahead and add 1-2 inches of soil in an attempt to protect the base where most of the new shoots came from this year, maybe with an added layer of winter protective mulch on top of that.

Thanks for all of the information and help!

Grafted roses will go own-root if the graft is set at soil level or below, but never if it is up in the air. Maybe this plant was budded in higher and lower locations so as to produce an elongated graft, but that is not standard practice if it's even possible. Or maybe the maiden (initial shoot from the graft) was accidentally cut or broken short and a swelling developed where it sprouted growth. I'm flailing here.

This post was edited by michaelg on Thu, Oct 16, 14 at 10:46

It is a puzzle, isn't it, Michael. I can't really help out on this.

Arlene, what I recommend is, for now, go ahead and add a couple inches of soil to change the grade. And maybe even add some mulch or leaves for added winter protection. Before you do that, however, clearly mark those large canes coming from beneath the apparent graft. Then next spring observe very closely exactly which canes are blooming yellow Julia Child blooms. Check very carefully to see what the marked canes give as blooms--if nothing or a darker red single bloom, then those are probably rootstock taking over and eventually destroying the Julia Child plant. If the marked canes bloom (or not) anything except Julia Child, then you have a grafted plant with Julia Child canes originating at or above the graft and red Dr. Huey (probably) canes originating below the graft.

Let us know next spring at blooming time what you get, and we can advise you then what to do. However, I want to be sure that you understand that rootstock taking over means that you will be growing a Dr. Huey rose and NOT a Julia Child rose.

After a brutal winter, these kinds of problems are not uncommon in Zone 6 which is kind of a "transition" zone between the hotter and colder regions--except Zone 6 can never quite decide which way it wants to go, so it often tries to do both. Really screws up some plants as a result.

Kate

What it looks like to me is:

the bud union is nowhere to be seen. It is buried a quite acceptable amount underground. So all the canes are from the budded variety.

the rose died back to the same point several years running. Around here, that point is almost always ground level. I am very suspicious that the soil level used to be higher. So adding more is simply going to restore the previous conditions.

The canes growing from underneath the knob are NOT Dr. Huey. Rootstocks are usually thornless, and marked differences in thorniess are often a good way to determine what is and what is not rootstock.

If you want to carefully go bud union hunting, that shouldn't cause any problems.

While these folks have oodles more experience than I, I can say that the 'knob' looks like what was on several roses I took from my dads place and it was right at the soil line. They had been there for about 10+ years, where in a bad spot and died back every year. So I, and I would be crazy not to, agree with mad_gallica that it was the point of die off and the graft is below. I, too, was initially concerned until I dug them up and seen the graft.

Hi Kate, We had a Dr. Huey growing on a trellis until last week when I ripped him out with the intention of replacing him with a prettier repeat climber in the spring next year. I certainly don't want him to show up anywhere else in the yard which is why I think I'll be purchasing own root roses exclusively from this point on.

When I noticed the shoots coming from the base of JC below the apparent graft this past spring, I thought for sure it was going to be the rootstock, but decided to leave them and see what happened. They definitely bloomed what I am 99.9% sure is the same lightly scented yellow (and later fading to cream) JC blooms we've seen for the last couple of years. So, that's why I thought maybe it was a JC rose grafted onto JC rootstock. Actually, I thought all roses were grafted, but "own root" roses were grafted onto their own root stock (silly me). Now I understand that own root roses are cuttings made to develop their own roots and there is no grafting/budding involved.

So I have no idea what's going on here. I can say for certain that the large canes that you see in the picture that came from the base of the plant bloomed twice this summer and I am mostly certain they were JC blooms. Would they switch over to Dr Huey next year?

mad_gallica and SouthCountryGuy, Ah ha! Okay, so that isn't a bud union I'm looking at after all. Thanks for clearing that up.

The soil line probably was higher at one point. The rose is in a raised bed, but the back of it is just a cedar fence. I also cut away some creeping phlox from the base of the rose this spring.

If the graft is reasonably buried already, I'm not going to worry about it. Maybe just the layer of winter mulch then.

Thanks to everyone for your time and help!

Just to clarify a point you raised, no, a Julia cane will not switch to a Dr. Huey cane. Julia canes are any cane growing at or above the graft. Any cane growing under the graft will be the rootstock, which is most likely Dr. Huey.

What could happen is that the rose suffers through another brutal winter and by next winter it has partly died back and rootstock (from under the graft) has started growing. However, given that your poor rose suffered through a brutal winter this past year, we'll hope that doesn't happen again to your roses. At least, I don't want it happening to a couple of my roses that have limped through this season as a result of last winter's brutal cold. Don't think my poor babies would make it! : (

Kate