Vigorous Plants and Recommended Planting Distances for Rose Bushes
By Monty Justice

Question: What is needed to have vigorous plants and is there a recommended distance that you should adhere to between rose bushes when planting?

What provocative questions! I've seen large roses (Hybrid Tees, Grandifloras and Floribunda) planted on 12 inch up to 6 foot centers with as little as 9 inches and up to 6 foot sides of the row. Obviously it depends on the effect that you want to create.

To help you decide what "effect" you want to accomplish consider the following.

1. Since the roots of plants grow between the particles of soil, which must contain air, the lighter more porous the medium, the more readily and faster roots develop. A light textured medium will produce more fine, hair-like roots that make a plant grow rapidly. A heavy soil medium will do the opposite resulting in fewer roots which are thick, stiff and penetrate slowly the dense less airy medium.
2. If you have amended the soil, created a porous soil mix and have fed and watered your roses, the plants first objective is similar to ours as humans-SURVIVE. By breathing air and getting a balanced plant food, the roots can now cause the stem and leaves above the ground to grow.
3. Slowly reaching out roots produce slow growing plants. Vigorous growing plants have many more "hair-like" roots. The lighter the medium, the greater will be the number of feeder roots.
4. More frequent watering, not necessarily more water produces better plants. Why? Think about it, every time you apply water and the faster it goes through the soil, the old air, no longer fresh is pushed away from the root zone and replaced between the particles of soil with fresh air. And what is air? Earth's atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen...what the roots, good soil bacteria and worms must have to thrive. So long as the medium stays good and moist, there is sufficient water for optimum plant growth.
5. Lastly, it's a Fact!!! The further from the plant you apply the food and water, the larger the more robust the plant hence the more canes and blooms. Planting on 4 foot or longer centers allows one to apply food and water away from the original planting. These plants will have many canes, take up more space and give the appearance of "specimen" plants.
   A narrow bed with roses close together does not allow one usually to apply plant food away from the roots. Therefore, the plants have fewer stems and blooms, are more upright rather than spreading and tend to create a garden effect.

To optimize space and create a garden effect, we use 8 foot landscape timbers placed end to end for a 16 foot bed length. Sawing an 8 foot timber in half placed at the ends make a bed width of four feet.

Inside this rectangular pattern we can plant 20 roses that are about 2 feet apart. Seven roses in the front and back rows. Six in the middle row between the other rose plants.

For optimum stems and blooms and still have the "garden effect", leave two to three feet within the bed area to feed and water so that the roots have to "reach out" in order to survive.