Generally speaking, most climbing rose varieties are pretty tough and will make it through the winter just fine. Some specific types are even champions at handling freezing temperatures. However, for others, a little extra TLC goes a long way in ensuring they bounce back in the spring. Here’s what you need to keep in mind to keep your climbers happy during the cold months.
Prepping Your Roses for Winter
If you’re looking for the most rugged varieties, keep an eye out for the ADR seal (the German performance trial for roses) when shopping. It’s a great indicator of a plant’s resilience. But regardless of the variety, you can feel confident about overwintering your climbing roses with just a few simple steps.
How to keep your plants safe:
- Mound up some soil around the base of the plant.
- Use evergreen brush or fir branches for extra cover.
- Wrap young, tender tips in burlap if needed.
To get your roses ready for the big chill, you’ll want to stop fertilizing in late summer or early fall. Give them one last feeding with a potassium-rich fertilizer (like sulfate of potash) to strengthen the wood, then put the fertilizer away for the season. As the temperatures start to drop, “hill up” the base of the plant by mounding a little pile of soil around it. For younger plants, you can stick some fir branches into the ground around them for extra protection. If you have very fresh, tender growth at the tips, slipping a burlap bag over them can help prevent frostbite.
Maintenance Tips to Keep in Mind
Just like us, climbing roses have a natural rhythm. To keep them healthy, you want to work with their growth cycle, not against it. This means you should only fertilize your roses during the warmer months. You’ll also want to do your main pruning in the spring, with a possible light tidy-up in late summer.
Pruning at the right time is key to encouraging the plant’s natural growth spurts. It signals the rose to focus its energy on new shoots exactly when it should. Just be careful not to prune too late in the year; if you cut them back right before a freeze, the open “wounds” make the plant much more vulnerable to frost damage.
