After recently choosing and buying a bare root rose for our walled garden I was a bit dismayed when six inches of snow and freezing temperatures arrived a few days after I got the new rose planted in the ground.

When researching how best to plant bare root roses all of the advice I read said not to plant them in frozen ground. As temperatures began to plummet last week (they reached a low of -13 degrees Celsius) I soon began to get worried about the effect of the ground freezing around the roots so soon after I planted it.

One evening I got my thinking cap on and decided I needed to somehow protect the rose from the impending night time frost. This is what I came up with…

Planting a Bare Root Rose in Frozen Ground

The solution I came up with was to place a small plastic cloche over the rose in order to keep the snow and frost off the plants but to also hopefully keep some of the heat in the soil and prevent the root ball from freezing.

Fingers crossed this will have been enough to keep the plant alive and that I got it in place before the roots were frozen into the ground. The soil underneath feels soft still so hopefully I got there just in time.