Trish Brown wrote:
Hi everyone. We've decided the beds containing my few remaining roses
could do with raising. The soil needs topping up with some decent
organic mix and a bit of mulch wants laying down (the present soil is
old and leached-out).

The question is, do I need to prune the roses, dig them up and replant
them in the raised beds (planning on putting about 8" of new soil in) or
should I let sleeping roses lie? I'm worried about collar-rot or
whatever it is that could go wrong where they're grafted!

Also, how big do climbing roses grow? I have a 'Climbing Queen
Elizabeth' which is about to take over the house! It's about three
metres tall and is now leaning over across the roof of the verandah! NB.
It's not really 'Queen Elizabeth'... the flowers are too tightly
petalled and too deep a pink: they're still very pretty, though.

Hope someone can help me with this. ;-D

--
Trish {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Don't move your roses untill winter when they are dormant. Prune
heavily, dig them up trim the roots and replant them in the new bed,
make sure that the graft union is above the soil level. If they are
looking a bit tired at the moment give them a feed of a commercial rose
food (fertiliser).

As to how big do climbing roses grow, that's a bit like asking how long
is a piece of string. Roses respond well to heavy pruning (ever looked
at bare rooted roses in a nursery) if your climber is too large cut it
back to the size you want.