Coat of Many Colors is a 2008 miniflora by Verlie Wells and does not climb. Joseph's Coat is a 1964 climber by David Armstrong. There is a newer climber (2006) by Tom Carruth that's supposed to be an improvement on Joseph's Coat called Jacob's Robe.

Thanks for the advice. We haven't done anything to it this year (as far as feeding). We've had more rain this year than the past two years combined! There are quite a few blooms but they're nothing like they were the first time they bloomed after we planted it, they're small, not as healthy and not the array of colors (that makes it a "Joseph's Coat...coat of many colors"). We actually tried to find another bush or two. No one has them. My SIL found some online from Home Depot. Might order a couple more :)

Hi! I am new to growing roses and I really want to start with Joseph's Coat. I live in New Orleans, and I have a brick planter on my patio that is about 9 feet long by 2 feet deep by 12 inches wide. I have grown sweet potato vine, carrots, morning glories, and even broccoli in it. I am wondering if it will be good for growing roses. Could I fit two or 3 bushes in that amount of space? Will it provide enough drainage? It has bricks in the bottom and is filled with potting soil. It gets full sun. I am going to build a trellis/privacy screen out of lattice and 1 x 4s in/along the planter and am looking for a good plant to grow on it. I was originally going to go with Confederate Jasmine, but I really love the color of the Joseph's Coat and have been wanting to my hand at roses. Thanks in advance!

Hi Cindy In zone 4, you do want to protect the rose but some of the strategies you mention may do more harm than good. In no zone should you put plastic around a rose (at least not on the first layer), as it would trap moisture and cause a lot of mildew and other damage to the rose beyond the cold. The idea is that whatever you put around the rose has to have good air circulation, so the styrofoam rose cones are also not recommended. If you want to wrap it, I'd recommend something like burlap that can breathe. I've seen some experienced rose people put bubble wrap around the edge of their rose beds but not around each individual rose. As a new rose grower, I wouldn't recommend that. You also should leave whatever canes you have on the rose and not cut them down in fall, even though you'll see some rose guides say you're supposed to do that. The reason you don't is that the winter is going to kill off a lot of the growing parts on the end of the canes no matter what you do, so if you have longer canes there's a better chance of some of the rose cane surviving. If you wrap the rose, you can take down the supports and lay the canes down on the ground to make it less affected by the wind. As climbers get bigger over the years I don't bother with that, but you could try it. I use the leaf bags you mention, but I don't put them on top of the rose but stand them around the edges of the rose, like creating a mini down coat. The idea is to protect the canes from the worst of the winter winds and provide some insulation so it doesn't have wild temperature swings from cold to warm till it's ready to wake up in the spring. You can fill the inside of the leaf bag circle around the roses with something natural that stays dry over the winter, like OAK leaves (other leaves get mushy and won't work) or pine needles. You probably have what is called a grafted rose, which means that Joseph's Coat is attached to the roots of another rose that you don't want to grow. There is a knobby bit at the bottom of the rose where all the canes grow from that is the graft, and that's the most important thing to protect over the winter. The rest of the canes can die and the rose you want will regrow if the graft is still alive in spring. If the rose mysteriously turns into a red rose, then it's the rootstock that is growing, and the Joseph's Coat rose would then have died. After all that, Joseph's Coat isn't really all that hardy even in my zone, and it has died several times even in zone 5 with a lot of protection, so don't consider it a failure if it dies. Go ahead and stand some leaf bags around it and wrap it in burlap maybe, and see how it goes. Do this AFTER the ground freezes (around here no earlier than Thanksgiving) or the mice may move in and chew on your rose all winter. You want the rose to get good and cold so it goes to sleep first. Snow is excellent protection for roses so a good layer of snow cover is the best strategy to protect a rose if you can get it. If this rose doesn't survive well for you, log back on here for a question about climbing roses that will do better for you in zone 4. Cynthia