A lot of people try and fix their roses and only end up making things worse. Then they need to bring it back. This can take a lot of time, and it might not always work. We tried to kill our roses bushes but failed, so rest assured unless there is a problem, if the bush is healthy it should bounce back.
Here are some of the things that you need to look at if you think your rose bush is right for the grave: If the rose branches are crispy, brittle, and brown, and you can snap them like twigs, it's dead, Jim, and it's not coming back. If the branches are flexible, and you can see green if you scratch it a little bit, it's not completely dead.
Did you snap it? Green?
So far so good!
Some types of roses don't hold up well under benign neglect, other types of roses flurish, but especially with competition from weeds and lack of fertilizing they will die. Roses need a lot of food. And if they don't have it they can die.
One thing that we like to do is get rid of weed competition is to plant something that is equally beautiful to roses.
Tulips.
They are wonderful because once you remove the weeds you can lay down about 2-3" of loose mulch and plant the tulips. They will keep the weeds out and you will avoid using things like landscape fabric which you will just have to remove later anyway.
See, all is not lost.
