Four hours and water not drained away sounds like a serious drainage problem! As you probably realise, roses do need good drainage; wet feet are an absolute no-no. So I would think this wouldn't work, unless you can find a way to sort out the drainage issue. If the water's sitting in the hole you dug, it's not running off downhill, so the water would just be similarly sitting around the roots of any rose planted there. I think... If this doesn't make sense, I'm sure someone else will chime in.

By the way, this is the forum for Rose Propagation and Exchange; there is a different forum for general rose discussions. You may get more responses if you were to post this or similar queries there. Click on Garden Forums in green lettering at the top of this page, then on Roses from the alphabetical list, and Roses again from the drop-down list. You'll see there are also separate forums for Antique Roses (a fairly vague term which can include anything except those Hybrid Teas, Floribundas and Modern Climbers introduced in the last c. 50 years) and Miniature Roses.

Comtesse :¬)

Thanks for the info . Sounds like Im going to have to rethink my plans

First, let's all sing the 'where are you' song.

Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
Wherere arrre yooou?

If you happen to be somewhere it has rained for the last month, then any drainage test you do is going to be thrown off by that.

Also, though the books all say roses hate wet feet, it is one of those cases where the roses don't read the books. If you take a reasonable assortment of plants, and put them in pots with saucers and keep them wet, the only things that will do better than the roses are the true swamp plants.

Pictures would also help, but the location information is essential.

You're welcome! But do check back here in case someone else with more practical experience of this sort of problem replies. I'm really only surmising; others may know better.

Good luck anyway, and please don't hesitate to ask more questions if you need to - rose lovers always love to help 'enable' others to grow roses, if there's even the remotest possibility of it being feasible! I hope I didn't sound too dismissive in my reply - it was only really intended to open up a discussion of the possibilities.

If you long to grow roses, maybe we can help you sort out a way...

Comtesse :¬)

(Cross-posted with Mad Gallica's)

Having response's like that sounds very promising and thank you again for them . Yes I would love to be able to replace these old poor firs with roses , so if their is a possibility.......

First I am living in the middle of France near a place called Clermont Ferrand. They call it volcano country , due to the many extinct volcano's on the area. It has not rained much in the past two months , and when I dug the hole no rain at all for at least a month . Once I dug the hole and saw the clay I put water into it , to see what would happen .... ( as said above , nothing happened ie: no water drained out.) So I bucketed the water out and prepared the hole for a plant ( Philadephus Coronarius , which is not looking to healthy now , rather brown leaves ) Cannot do a photo at the moment , but I see that what does grow well is a very robust ground cover , which has been their for a long time,( no name for this ground cover , but if you need it will find out) obviously this does not have deep roots , just trying to paint a picture . I have put other plants around this garden and the things that seem to grow the best are shrubs , established tree's and rose's.

France has been experiencing a heat wave at the moment , so if this place is not suitable to plant rose's I still want to plant them elsewhere in the garden ( although I would prefer the front side of the house with its slopping aspect , would look very good . Also receives a lot of sunlight . Anyway if I plant on the slope or not , is it ok to plant roses in July in France ?

I hope I have not confused the issue's etc

You could always put them in containers. Then they would drain. I have most of mine in containers since 2008 or 2009.

Thanks. I have been thinking of " finding " some old wine barrels cutting them in half and putting them in this sloping ground so the back of the container does not show too much , with the bottom open to the ground. What do you think

Many thanks for your ideas . They sound like a plan.

I would try fixing enough ground for one or two rosebushes and see if it is possible to grow them in the ground, because roses grow better in soil than in pots and need a third less water.

I live in California where the soil is heavy clay and my testing hole took 2 hours and longer to drain. I amended it heavily with compost and added manure and other amendments and my roses do fine. Some roses are tougher than others. When we had flooding in the public rose garden I was working in several years ago, the rosebushes in a 50 foot by 3 1/2 ' wide bed stood in more than 3 inches of water for 5 weeks continually, a few Tea roses died, but two R. moschata and several Noisette bush roses and several Old Blush' China roses in the same bed thrived, and did not even shed leaves.

Mermaid did well too with only 2 feet around it amended in my own garden, and a plus was that it kept it to a managable size of 5' in every direction. When I wanted a larger plant I had to extend the bed to 4 feet in diameter to get it to grow larger.

I haven't experienced the bathtub problem in my own garden, but I water infrequently ( once to twice a month in spring, summer and autumn and not in winter) but deeply and with a drip only at the base of each rosebush, so the ground around it stays dry. We're in drought presently so I let the grass around the rosebushes turn brown to save on water.

Best luck for beautiful healthy roses,

Lux.

Dear Lux

thank you for all that information.

I have put one rose in this clay area ( the water takes many

hours to drain if not a whole day !) and while it has not lost

any leaves , I can see it is not very happy. No real growth to talk of

and it's been in this whole for at least 6 weeks now. However I will

try the compost and manure.

Thanks for all the names of roses that survived the flood in your public

space.

Michael