my mum has a joke that she kills a rose every year, she does all the generic tips everyone tells her (bone meal, cut it back, wrap in burlap and cover with a bucket, yadda yadda...) and they do fine the year she puts them in but never come back the next year.
i really wanna help her out this year so i need some beyond-the-basics rose growing tips. also if you know of any particularly cold-hardy types that'd be nice to hear (they say we're a zone 5 but thats gotta be a load, plus we're like half an hour from a zone 4. this metric is flawed, we have really cold summers and really cold winters so the average gets messed up)
she never seems to get any diseases, they just plain don't come back. she prefers climbing roses btw...