Autumn arrives quietly in the garden. The air turns damp, the leaves begin to colour, and everything puts on one last show before winter. But as one season says goodbye, gardeners are already looking ahead to the next, because this is the time to plant bare root roses. 

In our new film, four rose lovers welcome us into three very different gardens: a suburban garden, a walled garden and a growing field. Each shares what that first planting of the season means to them.

For garden designer Pollyanna Wilkinson, roses are some of the hardest-working plants in her garden. She wants flowers from late spring right through to the first frosts, and repeat-flowering roses deliver exactly that. She's also keen to put an old myth to rest: roses aren't high maintenance. Deadhead them through summer, prune them once in winter, and they'll largely look after themselves, much like most other plants in the garden. In the film, she plants Emma Bridgewater^® in a bustling mixed border, a rose she chose because she loved its colours. 

But for Pollyanna, planting a rose is never just a practical job. Each one carries emotional meaning and something to look forward to. As she puts it, "It's one of my favourite things to plant because it's so full of promise."

Flower grower and florist Milli Proust has a connection to roses that runs back generations. Her middle name is Rose, or Róża in Polish, after her great-aunt who lived in Poland, and she loves that the name ties her family together through a shared love of the flower. In her walled garden, she plants three Sir David Beckham roses in her new rose border, and her feelings about roses are clear: "No flower can compete with the rose."

Out in the growing field, florist and dancer Andy Monaghan and ballet dancer William Bracewell plant a row of Dannahue^® side by side, grown to be cut for Andy's floral design projects. For them, a bare root rose is a lesson in patience. In a world used to instant results, there's no hurrying it along: you plant it, trust it and let the winter do its work. There's also something humbling in knowing that a rose planted today could, as they put it, "potentially outlive you."

Getting started is simple. Soak the roots before planting, dig a generous hole, and water the rose in well. Then let it do the rest. A bare root rose comes on remarkably quickly in its first year, and within two or three years it will feel as though it's always been there. 

So this autumn, find a spot, soak some roots, and plant something full of promise.

Watch the full film below.