Hi all,

I'm a newbie here, so if there's an FAQ or something where this might be
answered then feel free to point me in the right direction.

I've just moved into a new house, and one of the things that I liked about
it was the fact that it has several well established roses. You can imagine
my despair when I awoke yesterday to find 3 of them lying down! We had a
particularly windy night (in Melbourne, Australia) and I can only assume and
hope that the wind blew them over. I propped them back up on the stakes
that they had obviously grown on, but got home tonight to find them fallen
over again (stakes out of the ground). Now this complicates things - I have
two border collies, and I'm concerned they may think pulling roses out of
the ground is a game! I need some defences!

The roses appear to be in pots, sunk into the ground. Is this common?
Should I dig them out and take them out of their pots? My problem with the
pots is that it limits the depth that I can get the stakes into the ground,
and I imagine would also limit the rose itself.

The rose 'trunks' are about 18 inches before any branches come out, and so I
was thinking that I could put something around the trunk that would give me
something to tether the rose trunk to and at the same time prevent the dogs
from getting involved.

Does anyone have any advice for an inexperienced gardner?

cheers
dim