That's what I use for my winter protected. I simply let the leaves collect at the bases of the roses and add a few more to any area that needs them. I aim the discharge chute of my garden tractor towards the rose beds. When enough are in the beds, I mulch the rest in place and leave them to decompose over winter on the lawn.
Right now my lawn looks just as good as those that have been raked or sucked up by leaf vacumes.
The leaves in the beds are pulled aside to prune in spring then replaced to use as mulch.
I have mainly oak leaves. Care should be taken with other types that mat down as they can hold moisture and cause canker and mold if allowed to be in contact with the canes. .

Thanks for your reply!

We live in an urban area and have ornamental pear trees overhanging the rose bushes in the back yard. The fallen leaves accumulate 3-4 inches of leaves over the winter. They have semi-flat, waxy but small leaves. The last two years our yard man has blown all the leaves from the yard up against the back fence.

We are considering asking him not to blow the leaves so they will work as a winter protection and weed minimizer.

Do I understand that you are saying that we don't need to worry about disease setting in over winter by the fallen tree leaves or rotting around the crown? We can just let the leaves stay where they fall, without gathering and mulching them first?

As I said, I have oak leaves which drain well, don't get soggy, slimey, or mat down, and breath easily so air can get to the bushes, helping them dry out quickly. My experience with other types such as maple leaves is quite different. I don't mulch the oak leaves except those left on the lawn. Those in the beds are whole leaves that stay curled up even when wet. All my bud unions are buried so crown rooing is not a problem.

We appreciate you clarifying. It looks like our last option is to plant oak trees!LOL Have a great rest of the weekend!

A solid mulch of leaves (or anything organic) in fall will nearly eliminate the cool-weather weeds and the spring weeding that, for me, use to be by far the year's worst chore.

I think it depends on the SIZE of the leaves, not what kind of tree in general. In our front yard we have a HUGE (5 stories tall, 4 ft diameter trunk) ancient (80+ years) "Scarlet Oak", which is an East Coast variety - its leaves are enormous, unlike our native oak trees, which have very small leaves. The huge flat oak leaves, if left on the beds as is, mat horribly and cause all sorts of problems (learned this by trial and error - mostly error). However, if the leaves are shredded, either with a lawn mower (which only works if you mow when there are not too many leaves - our tree is so big that it is very capable of covering the lawn with 2 feet of leaves, which obviously is too much for a mower), or a leaf shredder, then they make a great mulch and do repress weeds, etc.

Jackie

I do exactly that, Jaqueline. I do a mow when the leaves are really thick on the lawn, every 10 days or so and then fling the whole lot of the cuttings bag around the base of everything. I have tried making leafmould and although it is lovely, it is also quite a pain (would ya believe it, i originally wrote f~g, rhymes with bag - would not let me post it - who would have thought GW would have been so weirdly PC?) but, mixed with a few grass cuttings, fallen leaves make a lovely end of year mulch (and is so much easier than all that raking and blowing and squashing in bags and keeping damp all year for, like, 2 inches of leaf mould). But (always a but) if the leaves have any disease such as blackspot, rust or so on, then I do rake them away first (but these are generally the roses so not a great chore)

You don't say if you are in a rainy area or a snowy area.

Here wet leaves piled around the base of a rose seems to encourage stem canker. I keep the base of my roses clear of material, especially when the rainy season begins.

I think there is a difference between snowy areas where some insulation is helpful, and wet-winter areas.

Just my experience.

I live in a rainy wet winter area to beat anything else you all might live in - western Washington state, home of the Olympic temperate rainforests.

I winterize my roses with (gasp) wet leaves raked off the lawn and dumped directly on the rose crowns. have done this for years. And, I have yet to lose a rose with this method, to cold or to canker. Last winter, with record breaking cold temperatures (single digits), I lost 2 canes out of the whole garden.

What kind of leaves? bird-cherry mostly, some big-leaf maple, little bit of western hazelnut and madrone with a smattering of Doug-fir branchlets and twigs and cones. Whatever has collected on the lawn. The leaves do decompose and pack down over the winter. But no harm is done. I used to use compost, but every time I did I lost whole bushes to canker. Very discouraging - they'd be green above the compost, and totally black below. You can make things worse by over-protecting. If your winters are too warm, or you cover too early, you can seriously damage your roses.

I don't shred or compost these leaves, rake them up and carry them directly to the roses and dump them on. I think including twigs and branchlets increases aeration.

I know something about plant pathology and I can't think of any diseases the tree leaves would have that would affect the roses. Black spot on roses is a specific species of fungus found only on roses, for instance. The cherry and maple get various leaf spots of their own but these pathogens are unable to infect roses. Madrones get about a dozen different pathogens but none affect roses. Anthracnoses affect many different plants, but they're different species of anthracnose. So no worries there.

Ornamental pear leaves should be very nice mulch for the roses. In NorCal you do not need to winter-protect the roses, so all you need is a ground-covering mulch. Pears and roses, and cherries, are all in the Rosaceae family, but they still don't get the same diseases. Are these the evergreen pears, Pyrus kawakamii? excellent mulch if so. But you do not need to winter-protect the roses, they will rot if you do so, you're way too warm there. My rose garden in NorCal went through three nights of 19 degree F temps in the freeze of 1990 with no winterizing of any kind, and no damage at all. And that freeze broke 60-year-old records.

I have used live oak leaves,as mulch, on my roses this year for the first time. We have live oaks in our yard and raked them up from a couple of seasons. My roses are doing great and I have no weeds but they will not bloom. I usually have blooms all summer but they don't even have any buds on them. Any comments?

One other thing, though. If you happen to be plagued by voles and/or gophers, the deep leaf mulch can camouflage their tunnels and make their damage harder to detect until too late.

Susan

I used to compost the leaves and bring in bark mulch. The last few year I have just been using the leaves, red oak (large and stiff) and poplar (large and soft). Applying a heavy mulch in fall has virtually eliminated my annual and biennial weeds. There have been no problems, and the leaves gradually compost themselves. It's so much easier.

The issue with matting might be if you have a slope and the rain runs off the rose beds. However, when I water, the water has no problem penetrating the leaf mulch. You would just need to watch for this, and fluff the leaves occasionally if water is running off.

If you are concerned about canker, just pull the mulch back slightly from the canes. I don't worry about that.

We have mostly maple trees whose leaves, as Karl noted, are slow to break down. However, I've found that if the leaves are chopped up (we use the lawn mower) they make wonderful mulch on the rose beds, breaking down nicely, especially when topped with a bit of bark mulch to keep them from flying away. I'm always amazed at how many worms I find under the bak mulch, chomping on those maple leaves.

We use mulched up maple leaves too. It's free and I have a ton of it! They do mat up if you don't mulch them up first but I've never had a problem with it even when it matted on me.

Fall leaves is about 2 or 3 ft deep is all I use for winter protection. Chicken wire around the beds and dump the leaves soon after Thanksgiving.