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Same Rose as Fig. 29 Properly Pruned: Hybrid

With the Hybrid Perpetuals and the very hardiest of the Hybrid Teas this hilling up is not really necessary, but there are very many beautiful varieties which must be brought through the winter by this method.

After the roses are hilled up, wait until the ground freezes before placing the litter on the beds. No insects or mice will then inhabit it during the winter and injure the green wood of the canes. Another good way is to fill the spaces between the little mounds with autumn leaves or meadow hay, with enough earth spread over the top to keep them from blowing away. This is an easy method and undoubtedly adds warmth to the beds. In the extreme North, the best protection is to lay down and cover with waterproof building paper, which in turn should be covered with earth.

After the winter is over it is better to remove the litter or leaves too early rather than too late, because they will rapidly heat up under the influence of the warm spring sun and the buds of the rose canes will be forced into breaking too early, when any later heavy frost will severely kill back the young shoots so started by the heat. It is therefore advisable to take this covering from the roses when the frost is out of the ground and before the heat of the sun becomes great and lasting. Standard roses should be most carefully protected.

Try placing around them a rough box made of boards and filling it with earth, covering well above the junction of the strong growing stalk with the rose itself. Another good method often used is to bend down the entire plant after carefully loosening the roots and to place it in a trench and cover it heavily with earth.

Most Hybrid Wichuraiana and other climbers will come through the winter well by themselves. Others, however, winter kill more or less, not enough to kill the plant itself but to destroy parts of the main stems. The Wichuraiana climbers bloom upon the wood of the preceding year, and if such wood is lacking and the rose has to throw up new shoots there will be no bloom. If the main shoots are killed back the few existing blooms will be low down, so that in the far north it would be well to bend down the canes and protect them with the usual blanket of earth and waterproof building paper.