Rob, I don't know the right answer, but I do garden in heavy clay and so I see puddles and standing water each time after the rain, sometimes as long as 3-4 days after the rain. What I usually do is befor planting, I dig a hole and fill it with water. If water stays in the whole longer then 4-5 hours, I try to avoid planting roses in this spot or plant the most robust ones in this location. For example, my Darlows Enigma is planted in such location and loves the spot. So I think there is really no simple answer. Depending on roses, microclimate, soil and other things it could be quite variable. But I do think that roses are difficult to kill :)
Olga

Poor drainage can kill the roses. Its not the clay that's the problem, its the low level, poor drainage. Drainage is a gravity driven phenomenon. Don't confuse soil type with the ability to drain due to gravity. A bog can have sandy soil. One way to rescue the situation is by building up the area where the roses are planted. This can be as simple as a berm for the individual roses, or can involve more formal raised beds. A pot is also a form of a raised bed in your situation. One can also use drainage systems if you have a lower area to drain to. I like to use berms, which are much simpler. An even better solution is to plant the area with plants that love wet, poorly drained locations. I once had a house with such an area, and it was a fun & challenging- but ultimately a rewarding gardening experience.

Rob, there is no need for mystery. Dig a hole 16 cm deep next to the rose you planted. If there is water in the hole, then your rose is sitting in water.

jbcarr explains it perfectly. I have clay loam soils in one garden on a slope and sandy loam soils in another garden that is flat. The flat garden with sandy loam has much worse drainage, a combination of much heavier rainfall, no slope and impenetrable clay subsoil.

Ok, thanks for your comments. I already avoided the lowest part of the lot. I'll dig some holes next to the planted roses to see if they fill up with water or not. If there is a problem I'll see if I can widen and deepen the ditch and use the soil from the ditch to build up the soil level a bit. Or maybe transplant the roses in the problematic places to another spot.

Thanks again!
Rob

I have what is close to pure clay soil. Not crumbly as you said yours is when dry ... mine is the horrible brick-like stuff when dry. The answer for me was raised planting beds with lots of compost mixed in. The only plants that will grow in my unamended, unraised soil are native Texas trees and shrubs such as Yaupon Holly, Burr Oak, etc. (and I do have those fine plants).

Randy

Rob- sounds like a good plan. I went to school on this issue at one house I owned which had poor drainage. The solution was drain boxes, connected to 4-6" pipes that moved the water to lower ground. The landscape was slightly (1-2 feet at most) bermed and "swaled" to direct water to the boxes. It worked great, and dried up the back yard to make it usable for my dogs and kids. I planted my roses on the berms, and they thrived. It was an expensive lesson, as the first landscaper I had did not understand drainage, and produced a nice, unwanted pond that the dogs loved to get all wet and muddy in! From that experience, I always plant my roses a bit above grade- perhaps overkill depending on the local gradients- but they really like the improved drainage.

We had an a real doozy of a spring here. Unlike the drought ridden east coast, we had torrential rains off and on all spring. Our soil is heavy clay, heavier in some spots in the yard then others, but it's all pretty bad. For the roses planted directly in the ground (as opposed to raised beds) I was fearful that having their roots saturated for weeks would kill them. Didn't loose a one. I lost some other perennials from the wet, but no roses. In fact, before I knew that it would continue to rain for weeks, I dug a hole to plant a new rose (on multiflora rootstock btw)and water poured into it (to a depth of about 4 inches). I planted the rose anyway leaving the graft about 3 inches above grade (in other words I planted it high). The roses began looking a little chloratic after about the 3rd week of standing in water, but they pulled through when it finally dried out. It only proves to me that roses can be amazingly adaptable.

Caution, Rob: if you dig a hole, it will fill with water because you created a sump. Remember: you are checking for water the very moment you dig the hole, not 5 minutes later.

jbcarr and I had the same fix. Small drainage swales with slightly raised pillows for planting (technically berms but not like we see next to freeways) will work wonders. With drainage, it's a matter of inches to let gravity do its work.

It feels so... presumptuous to be giving advice to Rob. The Netherlands invented drainage. Most of the country about 12 feet below sea level. Those Dutch engineers know their stuff.

Hello dear rose fanatics,

I'm Rob's brother and I wanted to show you how totaly floated my lot is at this time.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:348759}}

Welcome to the forum, Rosatimo.
That's a lot of water. Hopefully it it will not last long.
My sympathy.
Olga

Hmm, guess we'll have to some serious engineering to get that fixed!

Rob

I am way out of my league with this one! Maybe a 4 foot dirt fill?? Looks unusable- except for a water garden- short of major work. I assume its fresh water?

Yes, it's because of the rainfall we had the last couple of days, so it looks worse than it actually is, it was dry when we planted! We did not expect it to flood so easily. We'll have to see how quickly it drains.

Rob (and Rosatimo),
When you were digging, did the ground smell of sulphur? (Anaerobic bacteria's byproducts) Were there areas of discoloration of the clay? (A lesson from NOLA, when there's a water main break, and the workers are digging down, they can tell when they're getting close, because the clay changes colors.) Is this just a temporary problem or an annual problem?

For ten years (+) we've been diverting gray water onto roses on our hillside. So I do have roses that have had their roots sopping wet (southern descriptive term as in dripping off of a mop wet) for years. Roses on multiflora rootstock, on Manetti rootstock and some on their own roots have survived and in some years thrived with roots wet with excess moisture. This is, however, a hillside, and with the hillside there's gravity driven water movement.

How long can a bareroot, grafted rose sit in water? Well...I got some roses from Pickering at their late spring sale, and got most in the ground. And those poor roses have survived through five or six months of hot drought with a little auxilliary watering. But I never got around to planting Charlotte, that poor neglected rose has been sitting in a 4.5 gallon mudbucket with water since spring. It's got lots of feeder roots and some leaves. It has had its water changed when the dog (who has considered it and the rose a dog watering spot) tells us the water level is low. We did empty the water in it every three or four weeks to kill mosquito larvae. By late summer, it was doing better in water than some of the roses ordered at the same time were doing in continually drying soil. And that's why it's still in its bucket. (But it might get in the ground later this month.)

I would definitely pull those roses you planted in there as there is a low probably they will make it if this waterlogged situation stays for weeks. Also I believe your right and your need of some professional "serious geo-hydraulic engineering" advice (civil engineering). From the info you provided I would look at the ditch to see if it is flowing and whether your property is part of it's drainage catchment basin (does it flow by your property line?). If so then there is little you can do about it without building up with fill. I would suggest watch out for neighbor's complaints if you put fill in.

As an aside of interest, there is an area north of the city of Toronto in the province of Ontario in Canada called the Holland Marshes (swamps) that reminds me of your situation - decades ago the government drained it and convinced 18 dutch families to make a go of it - became a major success and a fantastic vegetable growing area in Ontario.

Back home my parents house was on a hill with a 5 foot drop to the bottom that was always wet with shallow surface ponds during rainy periods. The 6 inches of soil was under-lain by granite ... it was wet enough during the season that moss use to grow instead of grass. They solved it with putting in 12 inches of black soil and water loving cedars. These activities and the trees dried it out enough that they used it as a vegetable garden. They also further increased the "draining" by digging 6 inch deep "paths" between the beds of the garden.

If you abandon the area as a potential rose garden, I would suggest do not put in water loving aspens or populars as they will run surface roots and ruin a "lawn".

By the way are you near where they want to build Tulip Island?

Here is a link that might be useful: Holland Marshes in Canada

By the way it looks like your neighbor has some cold frames, are they growing anything in them or are they abandoned? Maybe they can tell you about the property characteristics and how often you have this surface drainage problem.

I lost 4 of the 5 original azaleas that came with my house because they were standing in 'swimming' pools of water underneath the topsoil. But the roses have thrived in the same conditions. So if this is temporary, I don't think you have to worry.

When I took this photo I walked through the whole area and my lot is the only spot with so much water on it. Their is a road along my lot and at the other side their is a ditch full of water. My ground is same hight (maybe lower) than the ditch.
The situation:

ditch-road-ditch-my lot

The ditch along my lot is not flowing, it's more like a basin.
My neighbours doesn't have ditches so I think all the water comes to my place.
I'll take more pictures tomorrow.

Two things come to mind.

1. Dig up the roses and plant them in very large pots for now. Roses can tolerate temporary inundation, but no one can tell you how long. I promise that it is possible to drown bareroot roses in sandy soil during a winter with 60 inches of rain.

2. Dig your ditch deeper. You get two benefits: a deeper sump and extra soil to make your lot higher. Don't try to build a wall. A wall traps water. Make the lot into a pillow that veerrry gently slopes toward the ditch. BuT: we don't know the rules in the Netherlands - - there must be a long series of civil rules about not draining your land onto your neighbor's land. You need to use care in following the local conventions.

I took this picture of Jeanne La Joie (own root) standing in water. This was taken in mid-May but the rains continued until mid June so the "puddling" only got worse. This is a flat piece of property so when the clay soil is totally saturated it stays that way until it finally stops raining and slowly evaporates. Ann makes an excellent point (although I'm not going to try it) about roses sitting in a bucket of water for a long time with little or no ill effects. Some plants readily root in water. I'm rooting a Coleus now that way. So I guess you could say some plants are more adaptable then others. Again, roses are amazing in what they will tolerate.
{{gwi:348760}}

The area we planted the roses in is a lot garden. It's a piece of a larger area that has stayed reasonably dry. 'Our' piece seems to be lower than the rest of the area so it is apparently the first piece to fill up with water when it rains a lot. I guess that's why this spot was still vacant while all the others were taken! My brother and I do not have any experience with this piece of land, so we'll have to ask the farmer that owns the land or the neighbors if this will just be an incidental flooding or a structural problem. In any case, the ditch on the lowest side is not wide or deep enough to hold the excess water, so we'll do something about that if it ever gets dry. There is too much water in there now to dig it deeper.

According to the weather forecast we'll have two more rainy days and then some dry days. Then we'll see if it drains naturally and quickly enough for the roses or that it just stays there for a longer time than we would like. If it stays like this for another two or three weeks, then we'll remove the roses and plant them in another spot or pot them up and see what we can do with them in spring.

Thanks again for all the advice!

Rob

PS Riku, when you live in the Netherlands, everywhere you live is near every other place in this small country :-) We live about a one hours drive from the coast. The government did not make a decision yet about creating artificial islands along the coast, they're still studying various options. Personally, I believe it would be way to costly to build anything like that, especially when they plan to make it a nature reserve! (I bet that would be the most expensive 'contradiction in terms' ever!)

It's not so much water as a lack of oxygen. Plant roots need oxygen as much as they need water. That's the whole thing with hydroponics--the roots are sitting in water but the water is saturated with oxygen, so the plants are just fine.

Hoovb,

It would be great for me that I can walk easly to my roses instead of swimming to it after every shower. ;-D Maybe it's fine for the plants but if it's good for me is an other question. :)

LOL-good point actually. I never did get back to prune down the overly vigorous Jeanne La Joie before the searing summer heat showed up. She's a real wild child now and I dread next years spring pruning. If I'd only thought of scuba gear this spring.............

Some of the old stuff I took in the civil engineering soil mechanics courses are coming back now after thirty years. The suggestion given on digging the ditch deeper, assuming this is a "drainage ditch", and not a dugout, within your property would help during "normal drier times" in lowering the phreatic surface of the ground water within the soil (fancy old fashioned technical word that just means ground water level when not telescoping out into the open as the surface of a lake) . But during floods doubt it would be of much help as the water will still rise to and above the surface if your in the lowest spot and the ditch is not actually flowing, or is too small for the quantity of surface runoff and ground water discharge.

You should also watch out for digging the ditch too deep with steep walls because it's sides can subside (fall in) from pore pressure dissipation if your soil is sandy or loamy. In the end though, the ditch needs to flow and be sized for the flow to get rid of it.

I had minor "water problems" in this property compared to yours and it was caused by me making the gardens by building 12 to 18 inch high rose beds and cutting the surface runoff escape to the swale.. It took two 9 inch rectangular catchment basins (sewer traps) and about 100 feet of drainage tiles and ditching to prevent the surface water and eaves trough water from ponding against my garden beds at the two lowest spots. I cut off the escape to concrete swale (ditch) that runs across the back of my property. The biggest pain I had was not enough gradient (vertical distance from house to swale) to accommodate the 6 inch diameter weeping tile ... so for the last 20 feet through the garden I used perforated pipe to let it go into the soil and cut two holes though my retaining wall for the discharges into the swale.

It would be interesting to see photos of the rest of the situation - I find it very interesting but can sympathize with how it sucks right now especially having dug those holes for a lot of roses. Hope you success in solving it.

Good luck.

I looked today and the waterlevel was a little less.
Digging the ditch deeper is the best solution and higher up the ground must make it a lot better.
I'll look every day how thinks develop.
Thanks for all the advice!

This shows how it goes with the waterlevel on my lot:

{{gwi:348761}}

Isn't a bad place after all. Little digging and I hope thats enough.

regards.