Ken, I stopped winter protecting years ago. I put leaves in the beds to suppress weeds and avoid the trouble of composting. I set the grafts slightly below grade and avoid piling leaves over the canes. There are a few older plants whose grafts are slightly exposed. If subzero temperatures threaten, I would pull leaves or snow over these grafts temporarily. However, our seasonal lows for a long time have been around 5 F, which doesn't seem to threaten dormant old wood. Green first-year canes are sometimes damaged, but then these tend to get canker if they are covered.

Stripping leaves for winter may reduce the transmission of blackspot into next year if you want to go to the trouble. However, blackspot also carries over in lesions on green canes.

Over here on the East side of the smokies a majority of my roses still have their leaves. I haven't done any winter protection yet with the ones in the ground, other than to move the few leaves I have around some of the younger plants. Crossing my fingers that they make it through! I've also left my potted roses out until they defoliate...although it seems to be getting late in the season. What can I say, I'm a 3 year newbie (with an explosion of roses this past season), and this is still all an experiment at this point! I'm definitly learning from everyone, but I guess I'll just have to see what works best!
~Tammy

I've never winter protected my roses in all the years I've grown them, and I've never even had significant cane damage due to cold, let alone lost a single rose. Like michaelg, I set the bud union slightly below grade. I've never stripped off leaves either, but black spot isn't a problem here. For the last six years at least, lows haven't been much below 10F. I know there can always be those unusually low temps that could do some harm, but I'll take my chances, I guess. I don't like any leaves around my roses because any moisture that occurs (we get very little) I want to reach the roses, not a mat of leaves. Diane

Cleaning up the leaves is a matter of preference. It will not reduce black spot for the coming year. It will make things look neater over the winter. I don't strip my leaves. Most years by spring they're all gone anyway. Old Man Winter does the work for me. And I think they provide some protection for the canes from drying winds and winter sunburn.

We put our roses to bed for the winter yesterday. The pots are all wrapped in a group with burlap and packed with leaves. I wasn't going to protect the ones in the ground but in the end my neighbor gave me several extra bags of leaves so we did. The new curb bed got wrapped in what I hope will be rabbit foiling chicken wire and then piled with leaves. The front bed just got leaves since I rarely have problems with rabbits there because it's close to the house where there is more foot traffic regularly.

Now we just wait for Spring!

Like seil, I usually leave ma nature to do the leaf stripping for me. The few leaves not gone by spring usually are removed during pruning. Once the weather warms a bit I do a general cleanup of ground debris, dead foliage from perennials, leaves, sticks etc, so the beds are ready for fresh mulch and new growth.

I'm 2/3 the way done. I'm kind of glad I'm doing it. Everything I have stripped so far has had an issue with spider mites and a lot of blackspot. I spray my roses but stop come mid Oct. Yes, I grow a lot of fussy roses but that's my choice :) I still get a lot of visitors to the garden, so I really don't want a lot of rose bushs with problems. I like the the look of stripped bushs that match all the tree's and shrubs. I also enjoy working out in the garden while it's a little on the cool side. Plus, I get a REALLY good look at each bush and how it grew during this past growing season.

Ken,
You might want to watch for sunburn on the exposed canes. It won't affect all roses, but it will really damage some of them to the extent of killing the surfaces of south facing canes that are exposed. What I've done is make a record of the ones so affected (and I tend to let 'stuff' stay around them through winter.

Most affected were some yellow orange floribundas and the HT Prince William.