Hi Cindy

In zone 4, you do want to protect the rose but some of the strategies you mention may do more harm than good. In no zone should you put plastic around a rose (at least not on the first layer), as it would trap moisture and cause a lot of mildew and other damage to the rose beyond the cold. The idea is that whatever you put around the rose has to have good air circulation, so the styrofoam rose cones are also not recommended. If you want to wrap it, I'd recommend something like burlap that can breathe. I've seen some experienced rose people put bubble wrap around the edge of their rose beds but not around each individual rose. As a new rose grower, I wouldn't recommend that.

You also should leave whatever canes you have on the rose and not cut them down in fall, even though you'll see some rose guides say you're supposed to do that. The reason you don't is that the winter is going to kill off a lot of the growing parts on the end of the canes no matter what you do, so if you have longer canes there's a better chance of some of the rose cane surviving. If you wrap the rose, you can take down the supports and lay the canes down on the ground to make it less affected by the wind. As climbers get bigger over the years I don't bother with that, but you could try it.

I use the leaf bags you mention, but I don't put them on top of the rose but stand them around the edges of the rose, like creating a mini down coat. The idea is to protect the canes from the worst of the winter winds and provide some insulation so it doesn't have wild temperature swings from cold to warm till it's ready to wake up in the spring. You can fill the inside of the leaf bag circle around the roses with something natural that stays dry over the winter, like OAK leaves (other leaves get mushy and won't work) or pine needles.

You probably have what is called a grafted rose, which means that Joseph's Coat is attached to the roots of another rose that you don't want to grow. There is a knobby bit at the bottom of the rose where all the canes grow from that is the graft, and that's the most important thing to protect over the winter. The rest of the canes can die and the rose you want will regrow if the graft is still alive in spring. If the rose mysteriously turns into a red rose, then it's the rootstock that is growing, and the Joseph's Coat rose would then have died.

After all that, Joseph's Coat isn't really all that hardy even in my zone, and it has died several times even in zone 5 with a lot of protection, so don't consider it a failure if it dies. Go ahead and stand some leaf bags around it and wrap it in burlap maybe, and see how it goes. Do this AFTER the ground freezes (around here no earlier than Thanksgiving) or the mice may move in and chew on your rose all winter. You want the rose to get good and cold so it goes to sleep first. Snow is excellent protection for roses so a good layer of snow cover is the best strategy to protect a rose if you can get it.

If this rose doesn't survive well for you, log back on here for a question about climbing roses that will do better for you in zone 4.
Cynthia

This was a 2year old bare rooted rose. It said hardy for z4 came out of michigan. But ive seen it online for z5 mostly. I planted it in a protected area gets alot of snow build up there also. So i will do the leaf bag around it n hope for the best! Thanks for the advice!

Hi Cindy

It's totally understandable to believe what's on the package, but what a rose is marketed at isn't really what it really is hardy for. I've not seen Joseph's Coat survive below about zone 6, though yours looks way healthier than mine do going into winter, so you have as good a shot as possible for overwintering it.

If you ever want to check out a rose with a more impartial source, you can go to helpmefind.com and type in the name of the rose. You can seem more descriptions of the rose, comments from people who've grown it, or check out gardens where other people grow the rose. If all the successful growers are in California and Texas and the Southeast, that tells you something more than the number on it.

Best of luck and it sounds like you have a good plan.
Cynthia