Did you water the plant well before taking it out of the pot? If not water well leave for a few hours and then try again. I have two David Austin roses and both are lovely but both have a tendency to drop their heads. I would not be without either though.

It should be dormant so should be OK to plant when the ground is suitable. If your ground is frozen or too wet I'd just pot it up again until things improve.

Hi, welcome to GoY, this sounds to me as if it's just been dug up, and instead of selling it bare root, which should make it cheaper, they've just stuck it in a pot, and sold it as either pot grown, or containerised, if it has been pot grown, the soil shouldn't fall away when you take it out of the pot, Derek.

I'm afraid that's a common problem with pot grown roses. You knock them out of the pot to plant them and the fragile feeding roots break, taking the soil ball with them. It's happened to me a couple of times when I first planted them. You need to be really careful when planting pot grown roses. Some people place the pot in the hole then cut it away with a Stanley knife rather than risk breaking the roots.

I'd contact the garden centre and ask them for a replacement. They might replace it out of goodwill, but a few garden centres I've used in the past are pretty mean when it comes to replacing plants, even when it's their fault.

Its a reputable company - why not ring them and see what they say? I would just have planted it but am no rose expert.

At this time of year most of the new-season, container-grown roses will have only just been potted so they won't have put on any new roots. Yes, you could buy bare-rooted roses but I don't think that you could buy David Austin varities as bare-rooted. You can plant it now if the ground is not frozen or waterlogged or leave in the container for a couple of months keeping it moist.

At the nursery where I work, we get David Austin roses bare-root, but we immediately pot them up, since they have little shelf-life in our low humidity. If the customers insist on taking them home before they are fully rooted in March or April, then we give them special instructions on how to plant.

As you have no doubt paid an inflated price for a David Austin rose which is almost certainly claimed as being container grown then you have every right to expect it to be in perfect container grown condition and that includes it being able to hold the rootball in tact when removed from the pot.