My neighbor's rose bed in Spokane looked dead in March and full by June, and the only change was the mulch

Jenny Lee · 2026-10-17T07:10:03.841622+00:00

I walk past this bed twice a day on my route to the hardware store. Back in March it was bare dirt and gray sticks, maybe 20 canes total, and I figured the guy had given up on it. By the third week of June the same bed had thick green shoots and about 40 blooms, and nothing about the watering or the pruning had changed. I asked him over the fence and he said he switched from bark nuggets to 2 inches of leaf compost worked into the top soil in early April. He said the soil under the old bark had gone hard as a brick and water was just running off the sides. Two months was all it took for the difference to show. Has anyone else seen compost beat bark that fast, or was this just a lucky spring in Spokane?

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My neighbor's rose bed in Spokane looked dead in March and full by June, and the only change was the mulch | Botany Lovers - Vivisector