There are so many ways to enjoy roses, and I do hope you’ve experienced all of them this season.  No doubt your rose garden has become a favored spot in the yard, offering an escape from life’s stresses.  I hope you’ve been pleased with your ability to grow these magnificent flowers and enjoyed the satisfaction of helping them grow to their maximum potential.

Chances are you’ve seen the delight on the faces of all with whom you’ve shared your roses.  If you’ve tried your hand at creating artistic rose arrangements, you’ve found that floral design is fun and challenging. Rose arrangements fill your home with color and fragrance, not to mention that they’re a lovely way to display your creativity.  Or perhaps you’ve rooted some cuttings from your rose plants.  It’s a great way to increase your collection.  

Late summer and early fall bring the most beautiful roses of the season! The cooler weather allows the buds to reach a larger size before opening, so the flowers are bigger than they are in the heat of summer. The colors are more vibrant, and the petals more substantive.  It’s the most exuberant way for the plants to celebrate the end of the season before they begin to slow down in preparation for dormancy.  Roses will bloom until well after the first frost, but it’s the early fall flowers that are remarkable.

Be sure to continue to keep your roses insect, mite, and disease free.  Strong plants, with healthy canes and foliage going into fall are better equipped to come through a tough winter.

This is also the time that you’ll see lots of new basal canes sprouting from the bud unions.  This is the plants’ way of ensuring their survival through the winter.  In climates where winters are cold, it’s a given that some of the canes will be damaged or killed. The new canes spread the risk!

But new canes that begin to grow after the first frost will most likely not reach maturity before winter sets in.  They’ll be so tender that the first very cold night will kill them. Because fertilizer encourages new growth, you should stop fertilizing all your roses about a month before the first frost is expected in your Hardiness Zone.  The plants will continue to grow strongly, and bloom, too, until the length of the days and the cooler weather signal them to begin their natural transition into dormancy.

New basal canes may start to grow even while the plants are going into dormancy, and they probably won’t survive. But that’s normal, so don’t be concerned.  It’s the mature canes that will get your roses through the winter.

Most rose plants allow us to observe their natural dormancy process.  Their canes turn purplish as they shed much of the water in their cells—water that would normally freeze and break the cell walls.  The cell walls thicken, girding their loins, as it were, for the winter onslaught.

Once the canes begin to turn purple, you should stop deadheading and allow hips to form.  By all means, cut flowers if there are some you just can’t resist—that’s why you’re growing them!— but otherwise, stop all pruning.  Pruning encourages the sap to run and the plants to grow.  It interrupts the dormancy process, which is the last thing cold climate rosarians want to do.

But for most of September, the roses will be fabulous. Enjoy every last minute of them! GG

Ann Hooper is a certified American Rose Society Consulting Rosarian, who grows nearly 400 rosebushes at her home near Boston. She is the owner of Primary Products, a mailorder supplier of everything needed to grow fabulous roses.  Visit the Primary Products website at http://www.primaryproducts.com . Ann will always answer your rose culture questions.  E-mail her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it