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You are here: Home / Garden / Tips for Growing Healthy Roses

Tips for Growing Healthy Roses

August 26, 2022 by Randy Schultz Leave a Comment

tips for growing healthy roses like this pink rose

Follow these tips for growing healthy roses and your garden will be the envy of the neighborhood.

Roses are the rock stars of the garden. Rose bushes are stately and impressive, and the flowers look lovely for weeks at a time. Back in 1986 when Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, he signed a proclamation that named the rose as America’s national flower. Fittingly enough, the ceremony that certified “national flower” status for the rose was held at the White House Rose Garden.

That’s just one reason why millions of rose bushes are planted every year. Despite the old-fashioned beliefs that roses can be tough to grow, advice from respected rose experts says otherwise.

“All plants need the right growing conditions to thrive, and roses are no different,” said Chris Van Cleve, a writer and rose expert who calls himself the Redneck Rosarian. “Just provide the right growing conditions and the right care, and rose bushes can thrive in almost any garden.”

Below are 5 tips for growing healthy roses. Simply follow these tips and your rose bushes with bloom and thrive for many years.

First Tip for Growing Healthy Roses: Select the Right Rose

There are plenty of rose varieties to choose from—more than 2,000. That number continues to increase because new rose varieties are introduced every year. Flower appeal and color are the top reasons for choosing to grow a particular rose in your garden. But other attributes are also important, including a rose bush’s hardiness, bloom time of the flowers, disease resistance, and more. Check out the selection of roses on Amazon. Home Garden and Homestead receives a small commission from sales generated by the links in this story. Thanks for supporting this website!

Many newer varieties of roses will thrive when grown in pots and containers. These rose bushes tend to stay smaller, and they don’t need as much root space to produce beautiful flowers.

white roses growing on a rose bush

Tips 2: Choose the Right Location

The second tip for growing healthy roses is to choose the right location for the rose bush. This is the art of planting the right rose in a place that provides the best growing conditions. A potentially gorgeous rose bush will never reach its full potential if it is growing in the wrong spot.

So, get to know your climate. Observe your yard so you know the micro-climates. Select a sunny location with good, well-drained soil. Roses prefer locations that get six to eight hours of sunlight per day. (Otherwise, they will not bloom abundantly.) That’s why you should never plant a rose bush under the shade of a large tree.

Tips for Growing Healthy Roses #3: Prune Wisely

Some varieties of roses bloom once during the growing season, then the flower show is over.. Other rose bushes are repeat bloomers. The flowers keep coming throughout the warm weeks.

Antique varieties are among those that bloom once. Prune these roses lightly after they flower. But resist the urge to prune repeat blooming roses during the season. Instead, prune these roses in early spring to encourage a strong blooming season. Check out the Garden Pruners on Amazon.

a pair of garden pruners are used to cut off a branch
Click on the photo above to see the impressive selection of garden pruners available on Amazon.

Tips #4: Deep Water Roses

For the healthiest rose bushes, water just once or twice per week. Water deeply so the entire root zone gets wet. This encourages deep, healthy root growth. But don’t water more often than twice a week. (More roses die from too much water than from too little water.)

Don’t spray the foliage when you are watering. Avoid watering with sprinklers or spraying the foliage with a hose. Water on the leaves can encourage fungal diseases such as black spot and powdery mildew to grow.

Tips for Growing Healthy Roses #5: Fertilize—But Not Too Much

Roses are known to be “heavy feeders.” In other words, they like to be fertilized. But too much of a good thing is not a good thing. Don’t use too high a concentration of fertilizer, which can damage the plants. VanCleave recommends alternating between compost and a balanced fertilizer for optimum bush growth and flowering. Check out the Rose Fertilizers on Amazon.

Final Thoughts

The best rose breeders and wholesale growers introduce new varieties of roses each year that offer stunning flowers. These plants are also quite hardy and perform well in most garden conditions.

Be an attentive gardener. Watch for early signs of disease or pest problems. Give your rose bushes lots of love, and they will reward you with the most beautiful flowers in the world.

red flower on a Mirandy rose bush
Red ‘Mirandy’ roses are set against dark green leaves.

Did you know

rose petals are edible?

Read more at

Garden Roses: Queen of Edible Flowers. 

Filed Under: Garden Tagged With: antique, bush, bushes, care, deep, fertilizer, flowers, garden, gardening, growing, guide, healthy, mirandy, prune, pruners, pruning, rose, roses, tips, varieties, water

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