Ms. Twig, what country are you posting the bud wood to? MOST EU countries require phytosanitary certificates the sender must obtain from the sending country's Agricultural Department. Many countries are afraid of permitting entry to Rose Rosette Disease. The Netherlands is fearful of admitting Rose Mosaic Virus. Germany will flat out return the package without the appropriate agricultural clearances from the Canadian Ag Dept.

That said, once you have the proper documentation attached to the package, the most appropriate method of preparing the material is to carefully remove all foliage. Leaves wrapped in close conditions for any length of time quickly and easily become slime. Bud wood doesn't require foliage, anyway. It is only sticks with growth buds.

I cut the bud wood from the plants and drop it into a bucket of water as I collect it from the plant. I remove the foliage and cut it to the appropriate length for the packaging I am using. I have used both newspaper as well as high quality, high rag content paper toweling, high enough rag content that when soaked and thoroughly wrung out so there are NO drips, it doesn't tear up. You want to completely saturate the paper, then squeeze out, wring out ALL dripping water. If it still drips when wrung, it is too wet. All that is required is for the material to be DAMP so it releases humidity into the air inside the bags, not drops of water. Rose material sealed inside a bag with liquid water turns very slimy, very quickly. I recently received cuttings and bud wood from here in the States where the sender had a LOT of liquid water inside the bags. In just forty-eight hours in the mail, the foliage had begun turning translucent, like produce left too long in a wet bag in the refrigerator. The cut ends of the sticks were brown and becoming squishy and most of the buds had begun to turn brown, indicating they were drowning in too much water. To contrast, in mid July, I mailed an envelope of bud wood to The Netherlands in the type of damp toweling I described above. EIGHT DAYS in the mail and the receiving nursery notified me they all seemed as fresh as if they'd just been cut. Post to the EU, unless guaranteed over night, takes a while.

Once you've cut the wood, removed the foliage and prepared the wrapping material as described, you may either bundle each variety of rose together with its label and individually wrap the bundles, or individually bundle them with labels and combine several bundles together to wrap. Either works just fine. I laid out the damp toweling and lined the bundles of individually labeled wood on it, then wrapped them up tightly so they would provide each other greater rigidity inside the padded envelope. I created the paper wrapped bundles so they would fit inside large Zip Loc Freezer Bags easily. Once the bags were packaged, I pressed the air from them and sealed them to prevent any moisture loss. I used sufficient toweling to insulate the freezer bags against any of the prickles puncturing the plastic and permitting moisture loss. I then took the first freezer bag and inserted it into a second just for extra safety, pressed the air from it and sealed it so they were well padded with the damp toweling and double sealed in plastic to maintain the humidity inside the bags. I used a larger size padded envelope to hold both bagged bundles of bud wood, then sealed it with them and their paperwork inside, addressed and sent them Priority Mail. The whole idea was to reduce size and weight over a box and for the fully sealed and padded bundles to provide appropriate rigidity so they wouldn't be damaged in transit. It worked!

You'll have to speak to your postal people to determine which postal method fits your needs and budget best. Here, it was Priority Mail, one step below Priority Express, the fastest service. Overseas, "overnight" doesn't always mean "over night", so you should weigh the costs with the potential time. Priority could get there in eight to fifteen days. Priority Express, for more than twice the price, could take seven to ten days. This year, Priority required eight days. Last year, larger, heavier box, same week, Priority Mail required forty-eight hours from my post office (the same one I used this year) to The Netherlands. I gambled using the lower cost option and still received service within the range of the more expensive option. Good luck! I hope it helps! Kim