[AlaninCarlisle]

I've got a couple of raised rose-beds. They're about 0.5 metres high x 4 metres x 3 metres and built like hollow rockeries filled with soil. They were here when we bought the house in 1982 and have always housed roses. In the last few years we've had a quite a few roses die and each time I've replaced the soil in their immediate vicinity with soil from veg garden and loads of well-rotted horse muck and then replanted.

Unfortunately the re-plantings only seem to live a couple of years before they too curl their toes up and pass away.

I was at a local nursery this morning, described the problem to the owner. He shook his head and advised me to never re-plant roses where roses had been before. He seemed unimpressed by my changing the soil and adding muck etc.

I'm reluctant to accept his advice without checking on here as the beds are "tailor-made" for roses and apart from which there are rose-beds in the parks etc that I'm told have been there for 100 years and more.

As I'll need to replace another 4 roses this year, is there anything more I can do to ensure success?

[Yorkie]

There is indeed a well-known rose replant disease.

See the RHS advice for info.

[AlaninCarlisle]

Thanks Yorkie. I'll try the cardboard-box idea. It seems a simple and logical way of maintaining the rose roots in fresh soil until it's too well-established to succumb to replant disease