Devise raised beds. Then plan for drought tolerant plantings (Roses definitely aren't)

I'd suggest raised beds also. They will save you a ton of work in the long run.

Drip irrigation combined with mulch will substantially reduce water requirements.

In my yard, I have shale areas and the only way to dig a hole is with a pitch fork. Make the hole as deep and as wide as 2 to 3 feet. Fill the hole with good top soil and compost. I put all the shale I dug up into my shale driveway,not back in the hole. EVER year, you will have to add compost top dressing. The shale/rock will heave during the winters trying to close the gap, but your roses will (hopefully) have a good root system by then. Raised beds are the best, but sometimes you want a more blended look. Good luck! I feel your back pain. lol
:)Laura

The only thing your soil needs is organic matter, shredded leaves, compost, etc. You could build raised beds and that would get you a garden sooner, but just amending your present soil with lots of organic matter will, eventually, change what you have into a good, healthy soil.
Spending your money on something called "topsoil" is more often than not a waste of that money.

Around here, "top soil" comes from a municipal dump area, product is heavy, somewhat greasy (yes I know but it wasn't alot and I too was desperate) so anything you do will be better than that.
Organic material will be the ticket.

I have made raised beds here to tackle a portion of the slope and brought in a mix of topsoil blended with Leafgro which seemed to work fine though it dries out faster than I like.
I can understand laying organic material on top of something like clay. You can find earthworms and such to to come up from the clay layer into the compost to help work it into the soil. With this rocky, stony stuff, I fear I might be waiting a long time before that happens.

I have a bunch of potted plants I'd like to put in. I do grow roses here, it's just that it's a heck of a lot of work to chop a hole large enough and backbreaking; I'd like to find another solution if I can. Perhaps at the scale I'm thinking, it will have to be raised beds.

If putting down NO topsoil mix in this kind of situation, just organics, would you plop your plant into that or would you make a hole and put in a mix of other things including bagged topsoil for the plant for minerals? It has been my experience that every organic product at the landcape suppliers purchased in bulk tends to dry out very quickly when spread out.

I have this same situation. My native soil was stolen during construction, the contractor telling me that he needed to turn my yard into a road. He carried off my dark soil dumptruckload after dumptruckload after dumptruckload and replaced it with boulders and gravel. (I was too stupid to ask him to pile the soil on my land.) When it dawned on me that the name of the game in the topsoil business is rob people of their rich soil, mix it with crap, then resell it to them, I was so ticked about it, I refused to buy the stuff the earth mover guy wanted to sell (!!!) to me as the final yard coating, a sandy stuff he called topsoil. Consequently my yard was left with uncovered boulders and gravel.

I took up intensive composting, bringing home tons of leaves and seaweed and hay and making all the compost I could. The areas I have concentrated on do all right, and the soil is crawling with worms, but it's still very rocky and ugly.

So then I learn here, that my organic matter will disappear over time and I can, therefore, expect a lifetime of coming up with large annual amounts of compost for certain beds---my vegetable bed the most in need. Anyway here's what I hope will be my salvation---worms. I try to make my gardens as attractive as I can to worms, and hope that they will transform the soil over time. In the meantime, I half-heartedly pick out rock and boulders.

I can't plant anything like a hydrangea or a rose without the shovel getting caught up cold against a large rock. I make holes and fill them with compost and "soil" I rob from my vegetable garden. I bought two apple trees last year and had all I could do to find a place to plant them. Same with some grapes I bought. I've made raised beds all around the yard---either with wood sides or hay bale sides or one that was contained on one side by about 12 WWII era feather pillows. I've built side x side compost piles, removed the wire bins that contained them, and knocked the contents down to form a 14 inch high mound about 6' x 14'. I planted tomatoes there that year and now I alternate tomatoes and peas there. This year I've got some huge garlic in that bed.

I cover areas of my yard with a deep leaf layer, like three feet deep, a hundred bags of leaves. The first area I did that to, is now black and rich looking, but it's a thin layer. I make as much leaf mold as I can by dragging OPBL (Other Peoples' Bagged Leaves) into my woods where I ignore them for two years.

Anyway, that's how I try to manage the situation. Good luck!