Rugosas, Explorer-series roses and a few tough shrub roses come through a Minnesota winter on their own. Hybrid teas, floribundas and most tree roses do not, however good they look on the shelf in May. For roses that return without a cover of mulch or soil, buy own-root plants from the hardy groups. The sections below sort the stock by what survives. For planting and general care, see growing roses in Minnesota.
Which roses survive a Minnesota winter
Minnesota spans USDA hardiness zones 3a to 5a. That system rests on a single measurement, the average annual extreme minimum temperature, so it tells you how cold the worst nights get and nothing else. The far north sits at 3a. The Twin Cities, warmed by the urban heat island, are at the warm end of the range (mostly 5a), and other parts of Minnesota can differ from the metro by a full zone or more.
Rugosas and the Canadian Explorer series sit at the cold end of what roses can take. Rugosas descend from a wild species that grows along northern coasts, and the Explorer roses were bred in Canada to survive cold Canadian winters. Both groups generally come through Minnesota winters without cover. Hardy shrub roses from the Parkland and Morden lines, also bred for the Canadian prairies, belong in the same camp.
Hybrid teas need winter protection in Minnesota. That covers nearly every Minnesota yard, including most of the Twin Cities area. Floribundas and grandifloras share much of that parentage and behave the same way.
Why doesn’t the zone number tell the whole story?
Snow cover changes the outcome. A rose buried under a foot of snow sits near freezing while the air above drops far lower, and the same plant in a wind-scoured spot can lose every cane. A yard in the north with dependable snow can beat a bare yard farther south.
Timing matters too. In the Twin Cities, the odds of a 32°F freeze fall in the 30 to 70 percent band between April 17 and April 30 in spring and between October 11 and October 23 in fall, according to NOAA’s NCEI climate normals for the Minneapolis-St. Paul station. Northern Minnesota runs two to three weeks tighter at both ends. A rose that keeps pushing soft new growth into October gets caught by that first freeze before the canes toughen up. Rugosas stop growing and harden off early. Many modern repeat bloomers keep going until frost stops them, and that is part of why they struggle here.
Named roses that hold up here
These six sell widely at garden centers and nurseries, and each one handles Minnesota differently. Four (Hansa, Therese Bugnet, Henry Hudson and William Baffin) are tough, Knock Out is mostly tough, and New Dawn needs a caveat.
Which rugosas hold up in Minnesota?
Hansa is the benchmark. It is a rugosa with double, magenta-purple flowers, a strong clove scent and large orange-red hips in fall. It makes a dense, wrinkled-leaf shrub that tolerates road salt and poor soil, and is hardy to zone 3. Expect it to sucker, so give it room.
Therese Bugnet is a rugosa hybrid with loose, double pink flowers on tall, reddish canes. It blooms hard in early summer, repeats lightly afterward, and takes northern cold without protection. The canes sometimes brown at the tips after a bad winter, which costs you a trim and not the plant.
From the Explorer series, Henry Hudson is a compact white rugosa hybrid, and William Baffin is a tall climbing rose with magenta-pink flowers. Both are bred for the same cold, and William Baffin is among the few climbers that needs no laying down in most of the state.
Do Knock Out and New Dawn survive Minnesota winters?
Knock Out is one of the best-selling landscape roses in the country, and in the Twin Cities it usually returns. In a hard winter, or in the north, the canes die back sharply and the plant regrows from the base. Because it blooms on new wood, the dieback costs height and not flowers. When the buds swell in spring, cut out the dead canes down to live, green wood and the shrub will fill in by midsummer.
New Dawn is a vigorous, pale pink climber, and it is the least dependable of the roses named here. Its upright canes seldom survive a Minnesota winter intact. Many gardeners get a shrub-sized plant that blooms on new growth from the base, and a few lay the canes down and cover them to keep a climbing form. The steps for that are in Protecting Roses Through a Minnesota Winter.
Sold here, but not for this zone
Garden centers buy from national growers, and the stock follows national demand. The shelf in May holds roses bred and raised for warmer climates, and the tag may not say so. Many of those plants arrive already leafed out, which makes them more vulnerable to a late spring freeze. That risk is real even in the Twin Cities, where the freeze odds run through the end of April.
Which store-bought roses need winter work in Minnesota?
Look hard at these before you carry them to the register:
- Hybrid teas such as Peace and Mister Lincoln, the long-stemmed florist type
- Floribundas and grandifloras, which carry the same tender parentage
- Tree roses (standards), where a grafted head sits on a bare trunk well above the snow line
- Many English-style shrub roses, which suit mild, damp climates and often lose canes here
- Potted miniature roses sold as gifts in spring, which are bred for indoors and greenhouse life
None of these is a bad plant. Plenty of Minnesota gardeners grow hybrid teas, and the work is a yearly routine of mounding soil or mulch over the base before the ground freezes. Tree roses are harder, since the whole trunk has to be wrapped or tipped over and buried. If you want a rose that is fine without that effort, choose a hardy rose, because a tender rose rarely comes through without winter work, and an unprotected one often dies back to the roots in the first hard winter.
What to check on the label before buying
Start with the grade. Bareroot roses are sold in grades, and No. 1 is the top: thicker canes, more of them, and a stronger root system. A top-grade plant establishes faster, but grade measures size and vigor and says nothing about cold hardiness. A No. 1 hybrid tea is still a hybrid tea.
Next, look for own-root or grafted. A grafted rose is a named variety budded onto a different, tougher rootstock, and you can spot it by the swollen knob at the base of the canes. An own-root rose grows from the variety’s own roots. When a hard winter kills the canes of a grafted rose to the ground, the rootstock can send up shoots. Those are not your rose, they usually have small, single flowers, and many gardeners mistake them for a comeback.
An own-root rose that dies back to the ground regrows as the same variety. The colder the climate, the more often the top is lost, so the more this matters. Where winters are cold, choose own-root roses whenever the tag offers the choice.
Also read the zone on the tag, which uses the USDA system. A tag that says zone 5 means the plant needs help across most of Minnesota. Finally, check for disease resistance, since a rose weakened by black spot in August enters winter in poor shape. Rose Diseases in Minnesota: What the Climate Here Actually Brings covers what to watch for.
Checking this against your own county
A zone range this wide means your yard may differ from the Twin Cities by a full zone, and northern counties get frost two to three weeks earlier in fall and later in spring. University of Minnesota Extension has county offices and Master Gardener volunteers who know which roses have come through local winters. Call your county Extension office before you buy and ask which roses are doing well in your part of the state. For the Twin Cities numbers above, the source is the NOAA NCEI climate normals for the Minneapolis-St. Paul station.
Common questions
Can hybrid tea roses grow in Minnesota?
Yes, with winter protection every year. They need soil or mulch mounded over the base before the ground freezes. Expect canes to die back in a hard winter.
Do rugosa roses need winter cover?
Generally no. Tips of canes may brown after a bad winter, and a light trim in spring fixes that.
Is Knock Out hardy in northern Minnesota?
It often survives, but it dies back hard in the north. Since it blooms on new wood, it regrows from the base and flowers the same summer, though at a smaller size than in the Twin Cities.
How can I tell if a rose is own-root?
Read the tag or the nursery listing for “own root.” On a bareroot plant, a swollen knob where the canes meet the roots means it is grafted. When in doubt, ask the nursery before you buy.