Bush rose. 10 years plus. Move now?

[Miljea]

I'm not a huge rose fan, but my garden came with a white one 10 odd years ago (10x14m suburban plot).

Thus one deserves an ongoing chance. 5 years ago, fence panels collapsed on it; it fought back. It has flowered from June to Nov before now!

But it's hard up against a fence where 2 clematis one to the left, one to the right- link on a trellis behind it, and thus, swamp it.

I've been brutal with a rose before, (different garden), cutting it back into old wood, and it grew gloriously.

I don't want to kill it, but do I dare prune it right back? 3-4ft shots to 10" and move it a foot forwards in the bed? I can take a foot wide root ball with it. So the clematis doesn't overwhelm it but, ideally, will form a purple flower backdrop to the rose's white blooms?

Or am I having a Disney fantasy? 😂

I am not a rose expert but my experience is this: I had a rose of similar age in my garden. I wanted to remove it but initially couldnt be arsed to dig it out so I brutally hacked it back to just a stump and naively thought I could leave the root to rot in the ground. It spent the next few months trying really hard to grow back, so I realised if I wanted rid I'd have to dig the roots out. By god was it a hard job. Those roots went wide and deep and were hard as hell. I had to get a saw and a hatchet to some of them.

So in my non expert opinion, based on my experience, I would say that roses are tough as old boots but if you want to move it and keep it alive you will need to dig a mahoosive deep and wide hole to get the roots out without damaging them.

Good observation, thank you!

Hack it right back.. maybe 6 inches above the ground. When it starts struggling back (and I bet it will) feed it and let the shoots that grow forward grow, but prune out those towards the back. In other words, encourage what you want and annihilate what you don't

Please don't hack it back to the ground, or the stump. You may damage the graft and find yourself with a plant which grows from the rootstock and gives entirely different (and weaker) flowers and leaves.

Moving roses isn't advised but I've done it several times and it's worked out. To do this, you can cut the all growth back to a compact framework - roses do thrive on a hard prune - and dig as wide and deep a hole as you can before trying to lift the plant. Roses don't have many fibrous roots so you'll probably just see a set of taproots and not much rootball.

You can buy a sachet of myrcorrhizal fungi from the garden centre which encourages roses to take in a new setting. Just sprinkle this into the new planting hole and mix it in a bit. Firm the soil around the roots making sure that the graft point is above ground and not buried.

gives entirely different (and weaker) flowers and leaves. Not weaker, surely? The point of a rootstock was originally to have a robust plant as a basis for your temperamental ornamental rose. I suppose now the point of a rootstock is that it's easier to graft than to root cuttings, which are the two operations open to you if you are propagating hybrid roses since you need vegetative reproduction to preserve the genetics and make sure the offspring are identical to the parent.

But rootstocks are generally vigorous species roses, and tend to have single pink roses like a dog rose.

Before even thinking of moving it, I would root some cuttings as an insurance.

Sorry, yes, the rootstock growth can be stronger but the flowers are not anything like the size or perfume or longevity of the grafted plant.