Also, I would mound up soil when you plant it so that the 2/3 of the canes are covered with dirt to help them not dessicate.

I thought I once read Witherspoon uses Dr. Huey. I've never trimmed the roots as I'm always afraid of introducing something, but believe many do as it encourages more rooting. Most instructions that have come with my roses say to cut down the canes. Someone recently wrote on the "why", but I just ran with the take-away that it promotes growth. However, I would definitely follow Carol's advice to mound soil or mulch up the canes until they start growing and then slowly remove it. Not only does this protect them from drying out, but promotes bud break. The one time I had bare-roots with white growth, I left it against advice here and they greened up and seemed to do fine. The rose will tell you what it wants in that regard. Lastly, I once read either here or in one of my older books a great way to avoid digging a hole to China and still have the graft sufficiently buried: lay the rose at an angle. This is only possible in an uncrowded bed, but has worked out well for me. New basals will adjust and grow correctly.

Thanks Sheila, Your post was really helpful. I had nightmares last night about trying to dig a hole that deep and I'm not even digging it, my husband is. I just have to choose a location that gives him the room to dig it without running over anything else with the garden cart. We are spoiled with the little bands we normally get. I told him I wouldn't buy another grafted rose as this is too much.

Rose canadian, we'll probably also put a chair over it to shade it for a couple of weeks as the sun here will probably burn it up.

Thanks Vapor!

Hi all! Just a quick note on Witherspoon: I live in Durham, NC, where Witherspoon is located, and they don't do any rose grafting or growing. They get a lot of bare root roses from suppliers in the winter and either resell as bare root or pot up and sell locally once they're blooming. So the real question is: where do they order each rose from?

A few weeks ago I emailed Witherspoon asking if they had any Kordes roses (to save the trouble of scouring each variety on their website) and the reply made it clear that whoever they have in charge of responding had NO IDEA what Kordes is. They thought I meant it was a rose name!

When I visit some of the employees are very knowledgeable and some are....not. Maybe try calling and ask to speak to someone involved in the ordering for information on their rootstock.

Good luck!

mmmm - the chair is a really good idea!