How to Transplant a Rose Bush 

When ever you move a tree, shrub or bush, always mark (scrap of fabric or some string) what part of it was pointing North. Make sure it is oriented the same way in its new home. When I was very young, my folks were friends with a Native American Chief. He taught my father that trick. My dad said nothing he ever transplanted after learning this died and seemed to stress the plant far less.

I love your delivery on "your first tool should probably be...a CALENDAR" 😆😆😆😆

This is one of the most thoughtfully presented gardening video I have ever watched. Thank you for treating your viewer as intelligent and receptive. :)

You're very good at public speaking. Held my attention the entire video and that's hard to do!!

Who else had wanted to see The Big Hole the rose came out of? Love your videos, thank you.

Was going to prune all the canes back, but what you said about stressing the plant makes sense, so I will only prune what is absolutely necessary. Valuable info. Much thanks.

I was wondering if I should cut the top of the plant and you answered that question. I appreciate your information about transplanting.

Great that the advice provides for both Northern and Southern hemisphere seasons.

This was so helpful! I'm helping my mom transplant two established roses, one of which is my favorite of the ones she has, and I feel it would be a real shame if we killed it by accident. Your very clear instruction both taught me and made me feel like I could do it! Thank you!

Thank you for remembering the southern hemisphere seasons 😎 sometimes it's difficult to translate the seasons! 👍👍

My childhood home where I planted my rose bushes qhem I was young is being sold so I have to relocate my bushes in the dead of summer 😣. This is a very helpful video with lots of important information on how to safely relocate my roses! Thanks!

Have watched many how-to videos of this topic... yours is entirely different method but I like the science of it from your explanation... makes more sense... thanks and more power to your channel

Thank you for answering ALL of my questions and concerns in one concise video.

It's scary how my phone is eavesdropping. My husand and I were talking about moving a rose and I went to you tube and voilá - here you are! Thanks!!

Fascinating! Your teachings contradict what so many proclaimed experts have shared. I must say that after thoroughly explaining in detail, you make such valid points.

Ok, so I replaced my father in law graft rose from my backyard to front of the house after watching this video. I always follow all your advice. I hope my rose grows well in new soil and place. Thank you so much for video for us.

Thank you so much for your wonderful videos. I was hoping when I searched for ‘transplanting roses’ you would have something to share! Your advice is always so well-articulated and thoughtful. Thank you!

Great video. I lost my Quietness rose by transplanting it all wrong. Wish I'd seen your vid first.

So wonderfully presented Jason, clear and well constructed information. Thanks for that.

Wow, you are just incredibly helpful. Thanks again for you wisdom!💞

Perfect! We’re planning on moving several rose bushes next week (Zone 5)!

Moving a rose in mid sept here in southern New England. I am going to take your advice and that Pruyn the top of it. It’s a tea rose that is in a spot where it’s not getting quite enough sun to thrive. As I said before use of the best videos and gardening I’ve come up here and like everyone else on here I love your delivery. And yes I would love to see a tour of all your roses when they bloom next year. Thanks for putting this channel on

"Shoulderseasons" Nice word 🌹.

Very comprehensive! An example: the 2 opposing views on pruning at the same time! Nice to hear that info! I love how you refer to seasons; wish more gardening YTbers would do it.( Even mentioning the southern hemisphere!·) It just makes things simple and easy-one less thing to assimilate and re-calculate! Thanks for that and all the other balanced info. I think many other YTbers forget that the world watches them, not just their state or country. Greetings from Cape Town.

Thanks for helping me with this project!

Alexandra Thompson I completely agree with Ms. Locke--very instructive and to the point. I appreciate the links. Thank you.

So I landscaped for a lady that grew roses competitively. She told me to transplant them around Sept when the pears were falling off the branches. She would have me dig up the rose, give it a wide birth around the meat of the roots. Then take an arm load of pears, halve them, remove the seeds, pits, stems and mash the pear halves into the hole that's to receive the rose. Mix in a handful or two of soil, some vitamin b and then fill to the brim with water. Once the waters been absorbed plant the rose and back fill the hole. I'm no expert, and this was years ago to help pay my way through college, but I don't recall any of her roses dying.

Thank you. Very helpful and full of good advice.

Hey Jason, could you make a video on a tour of all the roses you have when they start blooming? Keep up the great content!

Very helpful, especially not pruning the plant at the same time you are moving it...double damage

Best rose transplant video I have seen. Thank you for the valuable information . I transplanted my "Knockout rose bush and it looks like it is in shock. It is droopy and the new buds are also drooping. I will water it as you suggested. I am hoping for the best outcome. This is a great channel. Just subscribed. Thanks again.

Great video! Thank you!

Great information, thanks for sharing 👍❤️😊

Thanks for another great video!

Beautiful. My brother recommended this because I'm transferring a rose about 20 feet and I'm scared. I've never done this for one and for two, it flowers intensely, so I don't want that going to waste next to my mailbox lol. Great tutorial!!!!!!

Last year in early martch l moved rose that grow in the middle of garden , and it worked very good , will check if it gonna bloom or not .this year l moved tiny rose into another place in fbebuary, roots was so good nothing needed tocut 😊

Just EXCELLENT, Jason!

Thanks, I'll try these tips. I have to move some roses in late July but the main challenge is the massive 9 foot climbing rose bush.

Really appreciate the video and information with regard to planting or re-planting roses thank you.

how did I know that when I looked this up, you'd be the top result!

Thank you ! Very useful and informative as always ! 👍🏼😀

Wonderfully informative video 👍😍

Vey informative Thank you! Helps a bunch!!! I am saving a rose from a lot where everything is going to be scraped away. I am stuck with removing now, which is not optimal, but it's worth a try.

Thank you for your video it was exactly what I needed, well done sir.👍🏼

Excellent video!

Aha! In this video I found the answers to questions I had asked in another one of your videos :-) Thank you !!!

Very useful information and very ressuring. Thank you 🙏🏻

Jason, thank you for talking about removing the top growth of the rose. I have often wondered about that. My mother, a great gardener, never took hers down. She would thin it as needed on transplanting (tree, shrub, whatever) but never cut it back sotospeak. I had learned from "more advanced gardeners" that it was wrong and to cut it back as you know we are admonished to do. Thank you for that information. I am not going to cut mine back when I relocate in Autumn.

Wonderful, thank you very much.

Thank you! Immensely helpful video and article.

Thanks for this Jason! I almost always have great success with roses but I have a new bed built to transplant 6 of my existing roses to so I watched your video in its entirety to see if there was anything different I needed to do. So, I reckon today or tomorrow the 6 transplants will take place. Oh and the 50+ (I think 55 but don't remember the exact number for sure) roses I propagated the early part of December are looking great except for 3 or 4. I have no idea why they didn't work but I'm happy with the high percentage of success. I love roses.

nice, will come handy when i have to transplant grandfather's roses

Thanks Jason from a neighbor in one of the southeastern states.

When Spring comes, can you please be kind an do a follow-up on Mme Hardy rose? I want to see what she looks like and whether she has survived the transplant. That size of Mme Hardy must be impressive!

Superb video

Great video. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience. You’re fast becoming my favourite youtuber where plants are concerned! With regards to soil amendment, wouldn’t you even amend with homemade compost?

Check your title. Thanks for the video. I'm new to Roses but I took some this summer from a few states over and they have been growing up indoors all winter so I really hope I can plant them outside soon.

Great video! I'm a big fan of your channel! I have 2 established rose bushes that were left here in my front yard from the previous owners. I'm in zone 10, the San Fernando Valley area in Southern California. It gets triple digits hot here in the summer months and well into September, sometimes October. In May 2023 I decided to try and revive these 2 established roses bushes and I became rose plants obsessed ever since! These 2 "OG" rose bushes are doing much better since I started researching how to care for them, but I feel they can do better in a more sunny location. I haven't moved them from their original location when we moved in to this house but I've been planning to. I've just been scared AF to actually make it happen! 😂 Their current location is about 4 feet away from the house with several tall plants/trees close by that make their current spot in the garden shady for a good chunk of time. I'd say these roses get about 4-6 hours total of direct sunlight in the summer months and even less sun in the winter. The smaller one has bloomed several times, although not abundantly. I've noticed that once I cut back all the competing canes feom the bigger rose bush nearby, it bloomed immediately and with much more vigor. But the bigger one will not bloom. It just keeps sending out tons of new canes and foliage but no actual bud development. I did notice this particular rose bush sends new shoots out to where it will get the most sunlight during the day. So I guess after all of that back story, is it because this particular rose bush wants to be moved to a more sunny location? I actually started clearing a spot in my front yard earlier today that gets tons of sun that I think both of these rose bushes will enjoy. What are your thoughts? We just had a tropical storm AND earthquake come through yesterday so the soil here is nice and saturated with water. It seems to be sandy soil here so it's not boggy, but it currently has a nice moist consistency at this time. Thanks in advance and sorry for the novel!! I tend to over share lol! P.S. I have about 10-20 other own root roses I've bought since my rose gardening obsession started and they are all doing well for the most part, especially considering they are still young and most are nnot even planted in the ground yet as I'm still trying to finalize how I want my garden to look. I have a visual in my head but I dont have as much time as I'd like to fully execute it. I know it takes time to build it all up and out, etc., so I shouldn't focus on perfection. But I like to think I am getting there. 😊

Wow! So helpful - I hanks so much Jason Warm regards Jennie

Great Video! Thank You. 😀

Just yesterday I had to do a transplant of a rose due to the rose bowl it called home having a large part of it cracking and breaking off. The rose in question is a Mr Lincoln that I got bare rooted back in August last year (I live in Australia btw; Southern Hemisphere) that has a number of very tall canes, the tallest being 7ft high. I've never transplanted a rose this large before, and normally I'd want to do this at least around May when it's colder, but I don't really have a choice given the circumstances; on the positive there's been a cool change in the last week, so the sweltering heat we've been having since November is no longer an issue. What I did was gently remove the plant from the bowl into a bucket filled with water and 2 capfuls of seaweed tonic to reduce the amount of transplant shock, and then transferred the soil from that bowl into a new one (I didn't see the need to use new soil as there was nothing wrong with this batch, and I don't see why there would be any die back as this is the same soil it was already in), filled it halfway, put the plant in, and filled in the rest of the remaining soil while emptying the bucket of tonic water per a layered, piecemeal fashion. 24 hours later, I have noticed some wilting at the top of the highest canes, and some of the flowers that were opened or in the process of opening have expired (the rose is in a full sun position). I was apprehensive about heavily pruning back the rose due to the weather still being a bit warm, but after seeing what you said in this video I'm somewhat relieved I didn't (although I have since deadheaded those flowers mentioned previously, though I'm not sure this was a good idea). For the next 6-8 weeks, I'll be watering daily and treating the plant with the seaweed tonic (or "Seasol" as it's called here) once a week, and refraining from fertilising for that period. Mr Lincoln is a fairly hardy breed of rose, so I'm feeling fairly optimistic that it will pull through. Thank you for the info in this video, especially with the timing.

I don't know how/if it relates to roses, but a few years ago I moved two cherry trees (eaters). We pruned one, but not the other, due to a difference of opinion. I didn't prune 'mine' and my friend did prune 'his'. The two trees were similar sizes, both had new, very spacious holes dug before we dug them up, with some blood fish and bone in the bottom. We did both the same day, and both are still neighbours to each other. They both got watered the same amount for the next two or three years, as I'm in dry East Anglia. The unpruned tree is now enormous, and probably 3 times it's moving size, while the pruned tree has only grown about half as much again, and you can even still see where it was pruned (we took off about a quarter to a third?). If I were to move another cherry I would never prune it first! Hope this helps others? Unfortunately the rose I want to move, I pruned today (January) before finding this video, now wondering if I don't move it for another two months, (into March) will it have healed the top by then? Any offers?

Great presentation-Thanks! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼✅

You are so helpful! ThanQ xxx

It's not hot in December in the South 😅 I do agree with you on not pruning during transplants. ❤

Very timely for me. Haha! The information shared are logical!

Great video just in time to stop the plan to transplant a one year old rose in November to another location in Creston. Will wait until March. Thanks…..

Thank you!

It’s FEBRUARY! A good time to transplant these knockouts! 😃 But maaaaan, did I mutilate the roots! It was in a corner where two walls meet. I could only access from one side. It was WELL established, and I yanked off a great deal of hearty roots (the ones where I couldn’t lift). 😰 I sprinkled some phosphorus around it so hopefully that will help. Thanks for easing my mind though. I have one more, but it will be the easier of the two. 😃 🌹

Interesting approach - my thoughts are - having rather a lot of rampant climbers like Cécile Brunner , Bonica & Pierre de Ronsard, I'm thinking when I need to move them I'd prefer to do it at the end of winter (here the ground doesn't freeze) when I could prune them before moving, when dormant - as much because of dealing with such a tangled mass could be very thorny and logistically tricky. Thanks for showing us...

Thanks for your Information 👍👍👍❤️❤️

I usually fill the hole to a third or half way up with soil, then fill it up with water, and then dump the rest of the soil into this puddle to fill the hole completely. this brings the soil as close and firmly to the roots as possible, and I do not have to stomp the soil for this purpose, which might do further harm to the roots.

I'm repotting a Hybrid Tea but this is still useful of course. Thank you. 👍 🇨🇦 🌹 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Hi Jason, Thank you so much for the video and detailed explanation. After enjoying my wonderful tall roses for 5 years, I am giving them to a friend who lives in a house near by. It is beginning of fall here (60 F) and we have a mild winter (-35 F) here in California with rains coming up in two months. I started watering the roses daily to prepare them for the move a week later. I try not to prune them as per your video, but pruning would make it easier for us to handle moving and planting as they are really tall. Please do let me know if you have any additional tips for me. Thank you

Thank you it's going to be my first time transplanting anyting oh, so here goes. Thank you thank you

p.s. I just relistened to your video and read the article you posted and decided not to prune the rose bush. It is in stress and but very much alive.

Very informative..!!!:)

great information as always Jason! but leaves me with a question when does the need occur for cutting the roots back?

Thanks for the helpful info. The next time I move a rose I think I’ll refrain from heavy pruning first. In the relatively warm, humid climate of South Carolina there are a lot of rose diseases so why give them too many entry points on a plant that will already be experiencing shock.

As a person in healthcare, I couldn't agree more with this method of transplant. If we did a hip replacement, you certainly wouldn't schedule a bilateral shoulder repair at the same time voluntarily. Why compromise the system more than necessary. Amendments pose the same question. if you start a vegan diet during recovery the system's microbiome and existing cells have been replicated to receive nutrients from your programming. If you interrupt it, the system needs time to adapt to the new nutrients, water intake that you are providing differently. B12 from animal protein is vastly different from B12 derived from yeast. Again, just another way to lower the recovery rate of the rose. I would imagine simulating it's present environment if it was thriving prior and then providing only amendments that were gentle, easily absorbed, and energizing to the plants system would be the most effective way to reduce recovery, minimize susceptibility to disease and pest infestation, and rehabilitate it in it's new spot. And this is why I was upset when my landscaper whipped out Felcos and pruned a 20 yr bush down to nothing and uprooted it without a concern for the root system whatsoever. Thank goodness I had a large pot to put it in or it would have been really suffering from such a shock. I regret not objecting sooner to the event. Lesson learned, speak up well before they even get near the plant because thanks to FVRF we have more knowledge than many from an expert! Thank you!

Wow. Love the info! I agree with other commenters, carefully thought out well presented. Thank you so much for posting this. I have three rose bushes (came with the house) I need to move to containers while we redo our yard. I discovered the flower bed they are in is dreadfully shallow (it needs to be rebuilt). They’re already struggling. I’m worried about killing them by moving them but they’re going to die if they don’t get moved. Any tips on keeping rose bushes in containers? Thanks again.

Funy, I live in the north part of Mexico. Right now is December and is about 25°c. So I just transplant a rose bush. We usually have hot winters.

Thank you Jason; you're consistently excellent in your presentations. When transplanting shrubs (I haven't moved a rose yet but intend to) I typically root prune (while in the ground with spade) about a month prior to dig-up; should this be avoided with roses?

Hi Jason, I was given a pretty large rose bush from a friend's garden recently. It was out of the ground for 3 days but held its own. We transplanted it ysterday and did as you said in the video....no fertilizer, compost etc. It seems to be doing well. I am not pruning it although It needs it. But perhaps I will as you described. My question is.....even if I do some light pruning, should I just leave it alone other than watering it - until next spring? It is protected by a stockade fence all around our small yard. And when do I stop watering rose bushes in general? I have one other that I have stopped pruning and fertilizing but water only. I don't mean to be so long winded. I SO appreciate your videos. They are the best on roses. Many thanks............

I’ve had no problem transplanting during summer. If the rose is dormant, you can’t tell how it’s doing. Lots of water, sun, and a little pruning are key.

Dear Jason. Thank you so much. Is it okey to uproot the plant after a month of good pruning. We are moving towards winter. I usually begging mid winter. So hoping replant in early spring.

The tops of most plants send hormones down to stimulate root growth. The roots send hormones up to stimulate stem, leaf, etc. So... you need the tops to stimulate replacement of damaged roots. Roots supply water to the top. With cuttings you supply the cutting's needs with a humid enviroment. So...

Brilliant teaching.Please can you give me some tips on Standard roses.My family have given me 4 ,i dont want to lose them.Its to save bending.Thank you Jason.x

Been following you from my tv and you did great helping me with my roses. I used to kill them but when i stumble to your account it gives me a 360 changes with my roses. Do you have a good advice what fertilizer for roses?

Coldest months in SH are june july aug.

Thanks! Are there any different things to keep in mind for ramblers? About to move a big one this weekend.

My rose shrub just heaved out of the ground this winter; is this the same process? the canes are green but I have not checked the roots to see if they are injured yet. What considerations should be taken in this situation?

I just( end of April) transplanted a climbing rose just little bit more than 1 feet from the original spot, there were some buds on every stems at that time. now more than half of the stems with the buds on them are died, the rest are growing,but I dont see any new stem growing, do you think this rose have a chance to survive?

Thank you! This video was just what I needed. And I'm sad because my god son just had his roses dug up and he gave me two bushed. They may not make it. It's getting pretty hot.

Hey Jason, thanks for your video, but can you tell me why my rose is getting yellow, not all of them some of them are doing good some of them turning yellow, and all of them are in the same area, its not that I am over watering, and soil is also the same soil as the others. Please advise. thanks

what type of rose bush plant would you recommend for the long stem roses?

It is now the beginning of July and we will be moving house probably by the end of the month beginning of August. I REALLY want to take my tiny rose bush with me as the whole lot will be demolished once we leave, but now am even more afraid I won't be able to. This is the first rose bush I have successfully grown and I'm really attached to her. :(

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Thank you this was very helpful . The people we bought the house from planted the rose bushes to close to the walk way hate having to move them but even after pruning they still reach out and grab your clothes it's third week in April here in the south. North Carolina you say I should be ok even without adding anything that's good to know. I just hope all goes well I've worked on them ever since we moved in and they look great to me they are a small red rose when the bloom. Does that matter on just red roses? Please let me know thanks for your advice. I'm thinking about digging out the new hole first and slowly work on the bush to make the move towards evening when its cooler sound good. Sorry I know I talk a bit but one more question how deep must the new hole be ?

Don't know if you will get a notification because this is an older video, but had a question and want your opinion. I have an old climbing rose that I want to move but it is currently running through the fence and the roots are pretty much directly under the fence line. I have heard it is good to prune right after they bloom and it is the perfect time now. My question is do you believe it would be okay if I do a major trim down now and I will probably be moving the plant between November December (I live in Texas). Id appreciate any info you could give to do the least stress to my plant. Thank you.