Planting Climbing Roses

Climbing Roses In Your Garden

Whether you are interested in a fast-growing ground-cover for beautiful soil retention or you enjoy weaving a plant through an intricate trellis for stunning visuals, climbing roses will rise to the occasion.

The long canes produced by climbing roses cannot support their own weight, giving clever gardeners the chance to use them to best and beautiful effect on trellises, arbors, fences, and anything else that will hold the canes. For those who prefer to trail, the same roses can be used on embankments, walls, and as vigorous ground-cover.

Rambling roses are fast-growers, adding as much as 20 feet of new growth each season. Typically they have smaller flowers than other varieties, but roses introduced in the past few years have been seeing a steady increase in flower size.

Taking Care of Your Climbing Rose

The major drawback of ramblers is their proneness to mildew. During periods of hot days with cool, moist nights, mildew is at its worst. You can prevent trouble by keeping your ramblers in sunny locations and making sure you only water them at the root and keep the leaves as dry as possible. An automated sprinkler system is a nightmare for a rambler-lover: make sure sprinkler heads are turned away and water them well at the base by hand. Try to water in the morning, instead of at night, so the rose will have all day to dry, and keep up a good pruning habit to allow for air circulation between the canes.

Which Climbing Roses Should You Plant?

Rather than choosing the climbing companion of your hybrid teas, consider climbing floribunda or climbing polyantha instead. They are much hardier than hybrid teas against mildew and disease and reliably produce profusions of blossoms. Deadheading these beauties may seem like a gargantuan task when they’re well-established, but it’s more than worth the extra time.

If your garden space is small or restricted, ever-blooming climbers may be just the ticket. Sometimes known as pillar roses, they grow slowly and can flower in spring and autumn if the conditions are good through the summer. For flowers on both sides of summer, choose Blaze Improved to make it most likely. Ever-blooming climbers are one of the best winter-hardy types, and in the spring, you can expect heavy flowering.

In small gardens, it’s often important to plan carefully so that you have flowers through the seasons, and in a garden with an ever bloomer, you may want to choose a summer-blooming variety to make sure you maximize time with your climbing roses in flower.