Buttercups or geraniums?

Geraniums tend to have thick, rough roots. They don't really mind being moved if you trim back the leaves with the 'Chelsea chop'.

I like buttercups and class them as a wildflower, rather than a weed. They can spread quickly, though. Your roses won't mind a bit. I feed mine tomato food for more flowers.

What Janeainsworth says ?
Daisy roots are buggers to pull up and they spread like wildfire.

The roots of buttercups are quite different from hardly geraniums.
If you just leave the buttercups they will spread everywhere.
If you want to remove them, tease the base of the plant out with your fork. If it’s a buttercup, it will have lots of white roots radiating from the base of the plant.
If it’s a geranium, there will be a dark brown single root that runs along the ground.
If you pull up a geranium by mistake, just shove it back in the soil, or put it somewhere else in the garden. It won’t mind at all

Let them all grow I have all sorts that come up where they want I have a clump of forget me nots in the middle of a path at the moment It ll stay till it dies down then it can get moved

Roses have very deep roots. Buttercups don’t particularly. Geraniums will have quite good roots if they’re last year’s survivors, but most roses have at least one really deep root. They’re very robust.

Your roses might be okay, Luckygirl. My roses are swamped with ivy up to two feet deep so you can't see any earth and they do very well year after year. I pour liquid fertiliser on them when they are growing fast.

I will reprieve them! Especially as at this stage of development I have no idea which is which!

Some of the geraniums/buttercups are in my rose bed - will the buttercups strangle the roses' roots? I planted the geraniums there as I had heard they were good for deterring greenfly.

I keep buttercups . I like dandelions too."The dandelion blowsily unbuttoning" some poet wrote that.

You have to admire buttercups, they are so efficient!!

Have both! What’s not to like .

Unless you absolutely hate buttercups then leave them. They'll look lovely with the geraniums and, although not good for honey bees, they're great for the buttercup bee.

They’ll look lovely together, won’t they?
I love buttercups - we have patches of them in the lawn and avoid mowing that bit when they’re flowering.