Very interesting pic, showing the whole plant. It looks great, ready to go in its new location.

wow.. How did you ever get that out of the ground. Beautiful plant.. May I ask why you are moving them? They look so healthy..

Queenbee-- We started growing roses in the early 80's and put all our roses in large bed even to the ground. As time went by it became almost impossible to keep weeds out of our garden so 3 years ago I came up with a idea to build 3 raised beds out of concrete block 88" wide and 30 ft. long(Each bed holds 26 roses) so this being the last year we just moved the remaining roses into their new home.--Ron

The rose is obviously almost fully leafed out. Will you prune it back to make up for the root damage?.....I had no idea that fortuniana root stock looked like that. Thanks for informing us....Maryl

Maryl--It depends on how much wilt comes with it.(It can become quite bad with this rootstock.)--Ron

Ron, I forgot to ask, how old is the rose?

Krista--We have had that rose about 10 years.--Ron

Well you certainly grow strong, healthy roses!!

Reminds me of my not-so-wonderful idea to relocate ownroot Darlow's Engima last year...roots everywhere (LONG roots everywhere)!! I ended up cutting a couple just to get it out of the ground and hoped for the best. Looks like its doing ok though, just a little stunted.

Good on your transplants...you're braver than me! :)

Seeing that massive root system reminds me of my pink knock out that I transplanted from my old house to my new house. It was only in the ground one season and one winter, grew from 12" tall when purchsed to 3' x 3' and bloomed profusely. So I didn't want to leave it at the house I was selling. Well I started digging this rose bush up and an hour later and 2' into the earth I was wondering if I would ever get to the end of the root. I finally, in desperation, just chopped the root off at 2', then pruned the top to help balance the rose. It's been in the ground at the new house since last summer and to add insult to injury the poor thing was transplanted in late spring when it was quite hot. More insult was putting it in ground that was anything but good soil. It was heavy and clay. So after being traumatized to the point of it should have died, the poor little thing put out some roses last year but didn't really grow in size. This spring I tipped the branches, cleaned it up, fertilized it well with compost and it's happy, happy now blooming all the time. I hope it starts to grow taller soon. It's still very small. I do feed it banana skins all the time and it seems to love it. I just purchased a sack of alfalfa nuggets to treat lawn and garden beds. I know this little rose was fed alfalfa back when she was planted in the other bed. I think that may have had something to do with that enormous tap root. I still can't believe that dainty little bush had that root on it. Amazing just as yours is.