Disneyland Roses - Winter Protection vs. No Protection - March 2022

On the southside of our house, we have three different Disneyland Rose bushes.  They're floribunda roses and the two that are to the furthest East were planted directly into their spots and on the closest to our backyard was transplanted last Spring.  That transplanted one seemed to recover once Spring arrived and leaf'd out.   During the past two winters, I've built a little ring around these Disneyland roses with a net of garden/chicken wire and then filled it with mulched leaves in an attempt to protect them from the dangerous Winter temperatures.  However, I don't really know the efficacy of the protection since in the 2020/2021 Winter, I protected all of them.  So, this past Fall, I decided to leave one of them out - without any protection other than being tucked in against the house on the southside.  You can see the photo below showing the transplanted Disneyland Rose on the left - without protection - and one of the other, larger ones - on the right in the mulched leaf ring.  With the temperatures rising, I've begun to remove the leaves and exposing the rose bush to the natural temperatures.

I'm putting this in the garden diary here as something to watch this year:  if they're ALL doing about the same in terms of growth, then I think we can say:  the protection isn't all that valuable.  But, even if that's the case, I *still* might keep doing it.  Why?  Because I HAVE the leaves (my gosh..do we EVER have the leaves) and it is a nice Fall gardening activity.    

The downside of this is that the leaves didn't break down AT ALL in the ring.  As I'm removing them, I'm hauling them back to the compost pile to be added on this Spring and hopefully begin 'cooking' down to make some of that sweet black gold to be used in the garden next year.