I have all of my roses in pots. Mine don't look natural if that is the look you are going for but for us, we like what we have. Most of mine are in royal blue pots. I have a large patio, 26'x31' with 18'x18' of that covered. Our patio furniture has blue cushions so it is just a sea of blue. I have one neighbor who just loves my sea of blue and another who thinks they are "gaudy". The pots sit on bricks placed around the perimeter of the patio on the ground so they have good drainage. I've put cyprus mulch down on the dirt around the pots so it looks nice and controls the weeds pretty well.

My pots are all 21". I know the roses will be good in them for a couple of years or at least until I can work beds. We have black clay so planting anything in the ground takes a lot of amending the soil. I've slowly been working on that this summer and just had a dump truck load of topsoil and another of compost delivered to help with that.

I've watched my neighbor plant rose bush after rose bush in the ground without doing anything to the soil and they all just turn brown and die. I offered a suggestion to him and he wasn't very receptive to my suggestion.

If you'd like to see a picture of my sea of blue I can post one later but right now the sun is too bright to get a picture.

My roses are about half and half pots and ground. I've had some of them in pots for as long as 8 years now. The bigger the pot the better though.

I have hundreds of pictures of my roses in pots. :) I'll select some. Hope it helps.

Good luck with your pot gardening!!

My roses that are on the grass are on the cement blocks you see in the picture above this.

Carol

Oooh!!! Those are beautiful msdorkgirl!!!!

Carol

Also check out Pat Henry's (of Roses Unlimited) personal garden. Many of her roses are in containers:

http://s576.photobucket.com/user/rosesunlimited/media/ba47620a.pbw.html#/user/rosesunlimited/media/ba47620a.pbw.html?&_suid=144069058638603614825551813083

It's the way I wish my yard was.

All of my full size roses are in 21" pots. The minis are in 14" pots. They sit on bricks or plant rollers for drainage. Holes are drilled in the bottom of the pots. Many of these are first year roses and some of these were bareroots I bought in June from Brecks when they were having their big sale. The heat has most of them bloomless right now.

Beth, I have been trying to figure out what to do with my 90 or so pots. Now after looking at yours, I believe that is the way for me to go!

Side to side they are 30" apart and rows are 40" apart so I can walk down the rows

Beth, I'm in your area too. I'd love to try roses in pots too. What kind of pots are you using? And are you using potting soil?

I have a variety of pots, ceramic and plastic. The plastic I just bought from Lowes for $5 each when they had them on clearance. The plastic are so much easier to work with than the ceramic and stone. I have historically used Sta-Green potting mix but recently started mixing my own.

I have 8 roses in 70 quart dark green feed bins that i drilled 1 inch holes in the bottoms for drainage. They have done extremely well, and have thrived for many years, and have gotten quite large. (blueberry hill, tropical sunset, bishops castle, our lady of Guadalupe, Elle, Julia Child, Symphony). I don't do anything but add organic fert and alfalfa pellets once a year. No bugs, no diseases, Its worked out really well. Nobody seems to be root bound. Everybody seems happy.

I'm sure this isn't what you or anyone else had in mind, but I have one rose still in a pot. I started it from a cutting two years ago. It's still in a black plastic container that a tree came in. You can barely see it in the bottom left corner. This pic was back in the Spring when we had rain almost every single day. Trust me, it doesn't look like that now, but the rose is extremely happy, with the base shaded by it's friends. While we may be having a hot dry summer, it's easy to baby the rose in a pot and give it individual watering and protection from my (dis)

i've enjoyed looking at all the pics and i'm still thinking about what i want to do but the pots look like the easiest solution