h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you stimulate a plant too late in the season, it puts energy into leaves and flowers rather than roots. This can be bad for it.

But you won't know for sure until next Spring.

Thanks Paul

The leaves have fallen off again, so hopefully it is able to put enough energy into its roots now. I’ll add some plant food to the compost in spring, to stimulate it at the start of the growth season

I would gauge its success by how long it's been thriving, and whether you have a mild Winter. Here in the Park, where I've planted a lot of roses of different kinds, I've never lost one. Never. I don't fertilizer or prune or do anything like that. But I put them where they would get good sunlight and reasonable soil, and wouldn't be next to plants that are incompatible.

Roses from Europe grow fine here in the U.S. So do Multiflora Roses, which are Japanese, a gorgeous white color, and invasive because they have no natural enemies. But Boston's Conservation Commission recommends leaving them alone. Animals can seek shelter under them and eat the rosehips. They hold down the soil with tough roots in the floodplain.

Every year I like roses better.

I have a Virginia Rose in my back yard. It has some beautiful rosehips now. It could spread by seed.

Yes, the mild winter last year did confuse it. We've had a couple of frosts so far this winter, so the flower has now dried up, but the rosehip looks good Roses are lovely plants

I love them dearly.

They adapt to a lot of things, so I wouldn't worry. If your rose is native to your area, it knows what it's doing.