Starting roses from cuttings can be an easy and low-cost solution to get more plants in your garden. Learn how to root roses and consider checking the plant variety patent list.
As gardeners, we want all the plants. We also want to try every growing technique. And we want to get all of our plants cheap — or, at least, our budget insists we do. So, what’s a gardener to do?
Rooting cuttings is a time-honored technique for getting cheap plants. An entire mythology exists around the subject. For example, cuttings are often called “slips” because common folklore holds that these cuttings only prosper if “slipped” off the bush when no one is looking. There may be a grain of truth to that one. A torn end, especially one with a heel of material from the main branch, will often root better than one that was cut square with a pruner. That may be because there’s more damaged material to produce scar tissue, a process called “callusing.” Callus tissue is like the plant world’s version of stem cells (pardon the pun).
Another tradition is that you never say “thank you” for a gifted plant or cutting. Maybe that refers back to the idea of slipping cuttings in secret. After all, if you thank the donor, did you really steal the plant? Whatever the reason, my mom would never “say the kind word” when I gave her a tomato plant or a houseplant. In fact, she’d tell me, “Well, I won’t say the kind word, but … you know.”
Whatever the case, rooting cuttings can be as simple or as complicated as you and the plants make it. Find a good reference book, such as The Plant Propagator’s Bible or The American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation. Alternately, a quick online search will also provide a wealth of information, much of it wrong, so rely on university sites (URLs that end in “.edu”) or get second opinions from trusted gardeners.

Plants generally want to live, against all odds in some cases. I once slipped some cuttings (yes, just like above) of a rose bush. I wrapped them in damp newsprint and dropped them off in my basement nursery area to callus. And then I promptly forgot about them. A few weeks later, I remembered them — okay, I stumbled across them while looking for something else — and found that several of them had already grown 1/2-inch-long roots through the now-dried paper. I still have a beautiful cabbage rose bush in the backyard, courtesy of those slipped twigs.
How to Root Roses
Roses are surprisingly easy to root. I’ve heard of rose bouquets striking roots in the vase, but I’m not a fan of rooting in water, as I find it difficult to pot up tender water-rooted plants without shocking them near to death, so I’ll focus on the soil method I use.
Collect your cuttings in late summer or early fall, when the new growth has matured and grown woody. At this stage, the cuttings are called “hardwood” or “dormant” cuttings. Earlier in the season, when the new growth hardens just enough to snap easily (a bit like fresh asparagus), they’re called “softwood cuttings.” Many plants, especially bedding plants, root well to this technique. Softwood roses root well too, but they need more support than hardwood cuttings do.

Either slip or cut fresh growth from the rosebush. If you cut with a pruner, make each cut directly below a bud, cutting at about a 45-degree angle. If you slip the growth, tear the branch downward from the main, so it tears a “heel” of tissue from the main. Trim each cutting to between 6 and 8 inches long. Remove all but the top two leaf sets from each cutting. If you cut an 18-inch whip from the bush, that can be separated into three cuttings. Make each sub-cut directly below a bud, just as you cut the slip from the bush. If you cut a large branch with many side branches, each side branch can be torn off as an individual slip.
If you want to use rooting hormone, now is the time to dip the cuts or tears in it. Rooting hormone comes in three forms: powdered, liquid, and gel. I rarely use rooting hormone, but when I do, I prefer gel. Some gardeners use willow water, a weak “tea” made from soaking willow whips in room-temperature (not boiling) water. Willows have naturally high levels of rooting hormones — so high that fence posts of green willow have struck roots and grown into trees. I’ve tried willow water and succeeded in rooting willows but no other plants.
Align the cuttings in a bundle with all the bottoms together (no cuttings upside down), and bundle them in damp newsprint. Allow them to callus by laying them in a cool, dark area for a day or two. Callus looks like white spongy tissue “globbed on” the cut ends.
After the callusing period, stick the cuttings upright in a potting case filled with soilless potting mix. I use a pair of clear plastic shoeboxes for a rooting case, one filled with mix, the other turned upside down as a lid. Pack as many cuttings into the case as you can without overlapping the leaves too much. Water the cuttings lightly, and close the case. Set the case on a heat mat (the ideal temperature for roses is between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit) and under fluorescent lights.
Now, let the cuttings do their thing. Check them for moisture every week or so, and remove any cuttings that fail and begin to mold, as not all of them will survive. But beyond that, don’t mess with the cuttings. In 2 to 8 weeks, you’ll see roots growing along the sides of the case.

Once roots start to form, take off the lid for a few minutes every few days. Think of this as a hardening-off period, just like hardening off vegetable seedlings. Once you can leave the lid off completely, separate the mass of rooted plants into individuals and pot them up into their own pots. By spring, they’ll be ready to plant out in your new rose garden.
Plant Variety Patent
Plant breeders protect their work — the new plant varieties they produce — in several ways. Depending on how a plant is reproduced and how it’s to be used, it can be protected under a plant patent (PP, PPAF), a plant variety protection (PVP), a utility patent, or a trademark (TM). These protections can last for up to 20 years and may be renewable, depending on the protection and situation.
What does this mean to a home gardener? Practically speaking, you can’t knowingly propagate and sell a protected variety. In some cases, such as in trademarking and registering, it’s the name that’s protected, not the actual variety. In other cases, such as a plant patent, you can be liable even if you accidentally propagate a protected plant, such as allowing it to tip-layer a daughter plant or allowing a pile of pruned branches to self-root. However, there are no “garden police” doing search-and-seizures in backyards. Most difficulties arise when a gardener deliberately propagates a protected variety for sale. Even then, depending on the protection, that gardener may only need to stop propagating and selling to avoid penalties if they were unaware of the protection status of the variety.
When buying new plants at the nursery, look for PP, PPAF, or PVP to know if the variety is protected from unauthorized reproduction. You can search the variety name on the USDA website to see if the protected status is still in effect. If you’re slipping cuttings from a well-established shrub in a friend’s yard, you can most likely proceed with confidence that the shrub is probably more than 20 years old and therefore no longer variety-protected.
Andrew Weidman lives and writes in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He’s been photographing nature and wildlife for more than a decade, always striving for that “National Geographic” shot. He’s been published in MOTHER EARTH NEWS, Grit, and many other publications.