I will try to answer, altho I am not necessarily a rose expert, however I have grown many roses successfully over many years. Roses can be a complicated subject. That old saying a rose is a rose is a rose.....well, not so much. There are many categories of roses and the care of them can differ somewhat and also the pruning and the timing of the pruning. In general, roses need alot of sunlight, good air circulation, and like most plants, good soil and planting hole preparation with something like compost for the ideal. Now, the way I see it, the main difference for regular gardener folks is this: fussy hybrid tea roses, grown for long beautiful cut flowers and to "show" them vs landscape roses, which are grown to look beautiful in our garden beds and are more carefree. I favor the old garden roses, which are classes of roses that have been around for hundred years and more, I recommend Antique Rose Emporium website for good info on these. Now to your questions: for lots of flowering plants, if you "deadhead" them which means snip off the old, finishing flowers, they will make more flowers rather than feel they have finished their job of making seeds. 1. So, yes, snip off the fading, crumbling blooms below the rose and right above a 5-leaf spot on the stem. 2. Not sure if this is a climber and wanting to throw out long "canes" which would need to be tied gently to a trellis or something, or if it is just growing more on that side and looks unbalanced, yes, feel free to trim it back to a natural spot where it looks balanced. 3. No, I wouldn't mess with the soil around the roots, once I had dug the hole (usually dig wide but the same depth as the container was) and back-fill the hole and then mulch with a couple inches bark mulch or pine straw or something, pull the mulch a few inches from the actual rose canes. 4. Roses, especially the fussy ones, are prone to black spot, which is a fungus and the leaves get yellow with black spots. Other insects can chew the leaves (look under the leaves) and others can suck the juices out. you might want to post a message on organic rose growing or just roses, becoz there are many ways to treat this, but I don't use chemicals, so I would use organic method. You could go to a garden center with a specimen and ask them how to treat it too. Good luck.