I live in a soggy climate with soggy clay soils, and am very careful about planting - never digging in wet soil, and backfilling all planting holes with native soil only to prevent accumulating water. But other than that, I make no adjustments.

The rose that has the amazing story about survival under floodwaters - and I think it was salt or brackish water, which is even more astonishing - is Peggy Martin.

I have heavy clay that retains a lot of water and doesn’t drain well. I usually mix some cow manure or store bought potting soil to my native soil when I am planting but nothing else. I do not live on a flooding area so they aren’t under water or anything like that. In my experience here I have lost roses to lack of water but never from too much.

Here, we probably could use any water one can get. The dry heat in the Summer is worse than too wet.

Wet feet is a recipe for gall.

Thanks @Tack UK - I saw this pic when you posted in on GW in Feb. Crazy lake times. I'm very impressed that it didn't delay the rose growth.

Wow, Tack. Sympathies on the huge temporary pond! We have a backup pond that will show up in our yard if we get a heavy rain, because all the rain from 3 backyards funnel downhill into our yard, but lately the ground has been so dry for the last several years the pond never appears. It doesn't hang around long enough to breed bugs and other nasties so on the whole the roses (and my family) don't mind. Our sump pump hasn't turned on in at least 3 years.

I would think that staying buried in water for weeks would deteriorate the foliage and cause some fungal growth, but that is such a distant memory that I can't picture the roses caring. in th short term. There's a famous story about a rose that escapes my memory that survived the huge flooding in New Orleans from a hurricane that showed the toughness. I think given the choice that roses tolerate too much water better than too little.

Cynthia

Thank you Cynthia. I should add that being in the UK the roses were fully dormant during the flooding. I'm sure this will be relevant to how well the roses coped. One plus I always find after the floods recede is the garden flourishes with the fertile alluvium.

Tack - I'm surprised that flooding didn't kill your roses. Remarkable! :)

Peggy Martin! That's the New Orleans rose that survived Hurricane Katrina. Couldn't remember it before.

Ah, the dormant state makes the survival make more sense from your flooding Tack.

Cynthia

I think surviving "wet feet" comes with a few caveats. First, as mentioned, flooding when the roses are dormant can just be shrugged off. Living in wet clay in Spring, when new growth is sucking tons of moisture from the soil anyway, would probably not be harmful. Clay that remains wet through summer, though mayhaps not a "bog", would be an invitation to root rot. Any plant not adapted to life in water needs oxygen for their roots to survive. But if that soil even occasionally dries out, roses should do fine. My entire garden sits on nasty (nasty, nasty, sticky!) red clay just a few inches below the topsoil, and yet I grow 250+ roses on over two acres in various situations, some in improved beds, some in native soil. As far as the climbers and ramblers are concerned, they seem to prefer the native soil!

Red clay, though it stays wet longer, and dries into concrete, still has a very high mineral/nutrient content that seems to suit roses, being the heavy feeders they are. Counter-intuitively, keeping mulch and/or compost on the soil surface helps moderate the moisture level and eventually the organic material will migrate into the soil. The one thing I do recommend is to NOT improve the soil in *just* the planting hole. All you accomplish is creating a bathtub with clay walls for all the surrounding area to drain into, creating a sump. If in doubt, raise the site a few inches with soil amendments, preferably an entire bed, and plant away.

Fig - well said. :)