Saturday, April 18, 2026, is Rush for the Roses, an annual event at The Flower Bin marking the beginning of rose season. This year’s event features over 290 varieties of roses and an inventory of over 5000 rose bushes in stock.
Once inside the Flower Bin Rose House, you’ll find hundreds of roses ready to take home and plant.
If this is your first experience with growing roses, here are some tips to help you decide which roses are right for your garden. Hybrid tea roses are very popular with dozens of color and fragrance choices.
Floribunda roses are generally smaller flowers than hybrid roses, but they bear many flowers each season.
Miniature roses are naturally smaller plants.
Thanks to The Flower Bin Perennials Manager Billie Jo’s knowledge and expertise, all our roses are well-established and following a brief acclimation period once you get them home, ready to plant.
What to do first – acclimate them to their new environment - sometimes referred to as “hardening off”. Here’s why taking time to acclimate your roses matters. Greenhouse roses are coming from high humidity, stable temperatures, diffused light, and low wind stress. Without hardening off, the plant can’t regulate transpiration fast enough. Result: leaf scorch, cane desiccation, stalled growth, and sometimes full dieback. This is especially important for roses because their new spring growth is soft, juicy, and extremely vulnerable. Greenhouse grown tissue is far more sensitive to cold than field grown roses. Here’s a simple, reliable hardening-off schedule:
Days 1–2 morning sun only, shade in the afternoon, keep evenly moist (not wet)
Days 3–4 extend sun exposure to early afternoon
Days 5–7 full sun
After Day 7 ready to plant
While your roses are hardening off, select the planting site and prepare the soil. Roses will not achieve their full potential if they don’t get sufficient sunlight. Select a location where each rose bush will receive at least six hours of direct sunlight a day.
Roses do their best when planted in soil that has been well-amended with organic material. We recommend products that are produced locally, such as Earth Essentials Sheep, Peat and Compost, or Nature’s Yield Compost. These products are formulated to work in our clay soils. A good rule of thumb is to use one-third of compost to two-thirds of existing soils.
The size of the planting hole depends on the rooting system. Roses are available in two types: own-root and grafted. Each type requires a slightly different planting technique. For own-root roses, prepare the planting hole just as deep as the pot and twice as wide. For grafted roses, dig a hole 2” to 3” deeper than the bud union line and twice as wide. This is to allow room to bury the bud union 2” to 3” below the soil line. Once you’ve dug the planting hole, fill it with water and observe how long it takes to drain. If it takes more than five minutes, add more organic material.
Remove the rose from its pot and center it in the hole, then sprinkle one to two tablespoons of True Organic™ mycorrhizal inoculum directly on the roots. Mycorrhizae will penetrate the plant’s root system and help the plant take up nutrients and water.
Adding a cup or two of Humate stimulates root elongation and fine root development and helps the rose take up nutrients and water. Humic by ferti•lome® is a good source of humate.
Backfill with amended soil, using enough to create a shallow basin to facilitate watering. Fill the moat with water. Plan to deep water your new roses 2-3 times a week during their first year.
Fertilizing: To support strong, healthy cane growth as well as optimal flower production, plan to feed roses four times a season, using a fertilizer formulated for roses such as ferti•lome® Rose Food. The first feeding should occur after pruning in late April through May, then every 5 to 6 weeks ending no later than Labor Day weekend.
With their beautiful color and pleasant scent, roses can transform your garden for many seasons to come.
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