Winter is maximum temptation time for buying bare-rooted roses.
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Garden centres, chain stores and growers offer them from as little as $15 and now is the ideal planting time, with weeks of cooler weather for plants to settle in.
What exactly is a bare-rooted rose?
Roses that are sold with bare roots are dug up usually between the ages of 18 months and two and a half years.
The roots are cut underground by machine before being lifted and washed clean of all soil, and the stems are reduced to two or three leaders.
This means plants are lighter than potted roses and thus cheaper to transport.
You might think a bare-rooted rose would be slower to establish than a potted rose but I haven't found this to be so.
My bare-rooted Chicago Peace took two to three years to reach full size but a tawny brown/lavender Julia's Rose, which I bought potted, struggled to establish, grew slowly and produced few flowers during its first two years.
It helps before ordering a rose to think about why you are planting it: for example, do you want to cover a pergola, grow a hedge, maybe fill a pot for a special feature?
There's a rose for every purpose but you don't want to plant a monster, say like the Cherokee Rose (R. laevigata), a single white climber that will soar cheerfully to 10 metres, to cover a small arch: you'll spend the rest of your life pruning it.
Nor is a once-flowering rose really suitable for a spot you look at all summer.
I made a mistake planting creamy white Paul's Lemon Pillar against our verandah posts.
It's beautiful for a fortnight in November and has big yellow autumn hips, but lots of low climbers repeat flower and one of them might have been better.
Having said that, rules are made to be broken and I remember being overwhelmed when walking between double hedges of once-flowering, pink and white striped Rosa mundi (R. gallica Versicolor) when we visited the glorious garden at Kiftsgate Court in Gloucestershire, UK.
If you don't want to grow many roses - apart from vegetable, they're probably the most time-consuming plants in cultivation - but can't bear not to have a few, there are plenty of bush roses that are happy in pots.
I've had Perle d'Or, with small, creamy gold flowers in a pot for several years and it seems perfectly happy and flowers all summer.
You need a plain pot for a flowering plant - keep swagged terracotta for your shiny green box balls and cubes.
My Perle d'Or is in a round clay pot, 55 centimetres high, with a 40cm diameter top narrowing to a smaller base. The design allows space for roots to grow down without detracting from the colourful flowers.
One way of limiting insect pests is to surround your roses with the right companions.
Garlic chives didn't work for me (and seeded everywhere) but I've had better luck with artemisias.
Wormwood (Artemisia arboresens) and its low growing form Powis Castle have lacey foliage with a slightly bitter, aromatic smell. Both look lovely and so far have proved excellent deterrents.
Rose growers offer a wide choice of bare rooted roses including modern bush roses, climbers, ramblers, and many others by mail order during winter.
Summer Sun is available from Treloar Roses, www.treloarroses.com.au, Perle d'Or is available from Wagner's Rose Nursery, www.wagnersrosenursery.com.au, and Rosa Mundi is available from Ross Roses, www.rossroses.com.au
