Climbing Roses

Hello, my name is Alex and i have a blog named www.flowersgrowing.com with informations about flowers and plants.

A will post here an article from my blog because i want some feedback. I start this blog 1 mounth ago.

"Roses are probably the most misunderstood and undervalued plants in the modern landscape. Most people seem to believe that all garden roses are troublesome, frail plants that need to be pampered and fussed over with weekly sprays and frequent fertilizing.
Climbing roses



There are many different types:

Hybrid Teas: This is the flower that everyone pictures when we think about what a rose should look like. The classic spiral centre and individual long stem make this the most popular of the rose classes. The modern hybrid tea can be an excellent garden plant, as breeders are concentrating on improving disease resistance and overall garden performance. Many people believe that fragrance has been bred out of the modern rose, but there are many excellent tea roses with strong perfumes and more being introduced each year. Rose breeders realize that people still want fragrance in their gardens. Hybrid Teas are great for the formal garden, but should not be limited to this use. If you don’t want be bothered with fussing about roses, be sure to seek the advice of an experienced rose grower who can advise you on the healthy and hardy varieties for your climate.

Climbing Roses: The modern climber is usually a repeat bloomer and grows around 10 to 12 feet tall or wide. There are so many different types available that it’s hard to describe them in one paragraph. Let me just say that they are the anchor plants of my garden and definitley the favorite plants of visitors.

Floribundas: Commonly called cluster flowered roses. These come in many shapes and colours. Like the Hybrid Teas, many varieties have excellent perfume, combined with unmatched flower power. Bloom shape can be ruffled and informal or high centred like the HTs. Floribundas are generally considered to be excellent landscape plants, providing bloom from June to Hard Frost. Most varieties grow from 2 to 4 feet tall, but there are a few large ones in this class, ( the Americans call the big ones Grandifloras). Several modern varieties are capable of having over 50 blooms at the same time, with only a short rest in between the repeat cycle. If you’re looking for roses that are well mannered and provide armloads of cut flowers, try planting a few floribundas.

Old Garden and Shrub roses: These two classes are roses are separate from one another but have similar growth habits. The shrub rose are without question the most underrated plant in the landscape. It’s a shame that more people haven’t taken the time to familiarize themselves with this group of plants. Shrub roses are a huge part of the rose family with growth habits varying from low ground cover types to large impenetrable hedge types. I have seen a few cities and parks make use of the mediland shrub roses, but with so many types available for the home gardener it’s a wonder that more are not sold in nurseries. The shrub type roses are usually very winter hardy and healthy, with the Rugosa’s being completely disease free. Some of the shrubs have an added bonus of colourful fall hip displays . If you’re the type of gardener who wants a lot of bang for you buck, then this is the type of rose for you.

Mini roses: A really fascinating group of roses with all the characteristics of large rose reduced to mini proportions. You can even find miniature climbing roses with smaller flowers and leaves growing to about 7 feet tall. Most types grow about 14 inches high, are everblooming and come in every colour except true blue or black. These plants are not house plants, but will flourish in any home garden with minimal care.

Now that you’re familiar with the various types of roses, lets get on with the best kept secret on the web, “How to grow Roses the Easy Way”.

As with many types of plants, variety is extremely important if you want to be a successful rose gardener. There are many hundreds of red roses on the market at any given time but only a few that are best suited for our climate and soil types. Try to find out what the best ones are for your area and then buy a #1 plant from a reputable nursery. Two for one roses rarely amount to much, especially when planted late in the season.

Roses are best planted in the fall or early Spring. Dormant plants are preferred over fully leafed out plants except for container grown and mini roses. Mini roses are usually purchased fully leafed out and best planted when the weather begins to warm in April or May. If you are transplanting an established rose bush, wait until fall or early spring when the plant is dormant, and remember to give it a judicious pruning.

Site and exposure requirements depend on the type of rose. Usually 5 to 6 hours of sun is preferred for most roses but there are a few shrubs, climbers and Rugosa types that will grow in more shaded situations. If you must choose between morning or afternoon sunshine, take the earlier option. Early morning sun will dry off the leaves, helping to prevent mildew and blackspot. Roses will tolerate a windy exposed site provided that hardy varieties are chosen or a winter mulch is applied to protect from harsh winter conditions.

Diseases

The old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” certainly holds true here. Planting a rose in good soil with plenty of sunshine and air circulation is your first and most important defense against insect and disease problems. Mildew and Blackspot are the two most troublesome problems but with a little effort can be easily controlled. If you don’t want to spray fungicides at all, then be sure to plant disease- free roses like the Rugosas or one of the healthiest of the others. Strip off all the leaves before your rose begins to regrow in the spring and watch for any sign of trouble.

Most home gardeners can grow great roses without the use of insecticides. Aphids are easily washed off a plant or are soon eaten up by beneficial insects in a healthy garden. Other insects can be picked off or given the hose treatment. Spider mites are a real problem for people who spray often, but seldom bother the organic garden. When it comes to insects and disease, roses are truly highly over- rated, as many other types of plants from tomatoes to carrots have their troubles but we seem to demand perfection from our roses. Try not to be to concerned about the odd spoiled leaf but take reasonable precautions against bad outbreaks.

Source: www.flowersgrowing.com

I hope you don't mind, I am printing your artical off.
I am in the process of building a gazibo for my wife, and we plan to surround it with climbing roses. We have several "ever bloom" red rose bush's in our front yard, but I have yet to find an "ever bloom" climbing rose. Do you have a source or any ideas?

Lizard324

Alex, hello. You don't tell us where you are from. I find most of your comments to be quite valid, however, as far as planting...I feel that it depends on where you live and what your climate is. In my zone, I often find that my roses are more apt to survive the winters if I plant them in early spring or late winter, giving them a chance to establish a root system before the worst of the winter sets in.

There is one other type of rose you didn't mention...Own Root. For those of us who love roses but live in more severe climates such as zones 5 or 6 or maybe higher, own root roses do so much better than grafted or budded roses. This is because there is no worry as to wonder if the graft or bud union is low enough underground or high enough to ground level so as not to be frozen or smothered.

Personally, I like the own-root roses best. The plants for the most part are much more disease resistant and stronger than grafted roses. They have a tendency to grow larger and flower better. You say that the Rugosa is one of the most disease resistant and strongest of the rose family. They are also almost always Own-Root because they are so easily rooted from cuttings. But all roses can be done this way.

There are new products out on the market today that help to make the quest for disease and insect control much easier. Bayer has a really nice systemic that is fed to the plant instead of being sprayed on. This helps with a more selective type of control. It only prevents those diseases and insects that actually penetrate the leaves.

Oh, BTW, I couldn't get to this article with the link. I got there through the profile link but couldn't find this article. Could you please revise this so others might be able to get there?

"I hope you don't mind, I am printing your artical off.

I am in the process of building a gazibo for my wife, and we plan to surround it with climbing roses. We have several "ever bloom" red rose bush's in our front yard, but I have yet to find an "ever bloom" climbing rose. Do you have a source or any ideas?



Lizard324"

Lizard, I'm not sure what you mean by "ever bloom". But like most other roses, climbers bloom just as much. There are many climbers that bloom in flushes over the summer as rose bushes do. I'm not sure what you mean by this statement.

However, since this is for your wife, may I suggest Climbing Eden? http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=1708 Eden comes in a couple of different colors now. The pink you see in the link and it also comes in red. It's a very femine and beautiful rose, blooms very well and is in constant bloom. I love to look at this rose when I visit the pavalion at the Hershey Botanical Gardens in PA. There are 4 of them climbing up the corners of this large gazebo.

This rose is very easy to find. The link gives you names of merchants where you can get this rose. This is just one of so many. Maybe there is something in this website that will suit you better.

Just a thought.

Julie

Thank you Julie. I am rather new to this rose business so I may be calling a rose by another name. By "Everbloom" I mean roses that are in bloom for just about the entire summer. Some of the roses we have by our house bloom only once in the early summer and that is it for them. They are great for about two weeks, but after that no so great.

Anyway, thanks for the info and more to the point, thanks for responding at all.

Lizard

Wow, those are incredible dainty beautiful roses, Julie! Very delicately looking (they all do, but this one specifically so)

>> Some of the roses we have by our house bloom only once in the early summer and that is it for them. They are great for about two weeks, but after that no so great. Lizard324<<

You have some old wonderful Old Garden Roses around your house. OK, so they bloom only about once a year but the show is out of this world!! Do you know what varieties they are? My thoughts are that you don't as they'be been in your garden long before you ever owned the property and are simply huge. Do your Old Garden Roses give you hips in the winter? That should give you another season of interest and that bascially comes from bird watching. Birds love the hips and they are good for teas and high in vitamin "C".

The "no so great" part would be a matter of taste. Yes, they do only give you the very glorious show each spring to early summer, usually hips in the winter and nice green stuff rest of the summer. But my experience with the OGRs is that they are easy care as they've been around so long that disease like black spot and insects just roll of them without any harm. The really big ramblers such as Dr. W. Van Fleet and his daugther rose, New Dawn are so disease resistant, I don't spray them at all. I can't spray them because they reach heights of 40 ft.

One of my favorite OGRs is a species rose called Rosa Eglanteria, Sheakspeare's main sneeze (read A Midsummer Night's Dream). This large lady blooms only once a year with lovely showy small 5 pedal blooms, but it's the leaves that are the interest here. After a rain and the bush is feeling really good, it's leaves can fragrance your entire garden with the scent of Granny Smith apples. I've often walked outside after a rain and wondered who in the neighborhood was baking the apple pie. Every winter the bush gives you beautiful yellowish/orange hips that the birds eat readily. Do not spray this rose or feed it after it's established. It gets mad and defoliates.

If you're a history buff, those old roses have enough history to keep you interested. Many of these roses were developed by Josephine Bonaparte who was herself an avid rose gardener and breeder. Others such as the Rose Eglanteria have been around since before the recording of history. Many of the oldest roses were used by apothacaries in the 1500s and before for the making of medicines.

Each and every rose has a recorded history, whether it be the newest variety or the oldest. Some repeat bloom (and can be older roses), others only once a year. Most breeders try to breed repeat roses since that seems what most people want. Understandable. But there's still places for those great once-blooming roses that get large and often take less care than the newer ones.

In my garden you find a little of everything. However, my favorites are the shrub roses and the OGRs. I'm especially fond of the little polyantha's, the roses used mainly in the development of the miniature rose. These are roses developed mostly in the mid to late 1800s, are usually smaller roses for smaller gardens but fit just about anywhere. The thing about these polyanthas is their repeat bloom cycle which happens so fast that they never seem out of bloom. Most of them have a nice sweeping form with small delicate, femine flowers and get anywhere in size from 2 to 6 feet. I will spray mine but it really isn't necessary. They do get black spot if not sprayed but can shake it off. Since I have the spay out for my Hybrid Teas and Floribundas, I spray them too and they don't seem to mind. They do seem better at keeping the black spot off if I do.

There are roses for everyone. It is your taste and how you see your garden that will make your choice for you. The newer roses that repeat better are nice too, don't get me wrong. I have LOTS of those. Just remember, if you have a place for history, those once bloomers can give you the show of a lifetime in early summer and the history forever.

Post edited by: Julie, at: 2007/08/03 12:07

Julie, 40 ft??

Julie, 40 ft??

Oh, you bet!! Some of the largest ramblers can get as big or even larger. New Dawn is a much more popular rambler than Dr. W. Van Fleet simply because it repeat blooms. I have one New Dawn here that is well over 20 feet, going up the 12 ft. arbor, across the 7 ft. top of the same arbor and down the other side. It's trunk canes are 3 inches in diameter. When I was young and lived in the city, I had a Golden Showers that stretched over the garages of three city rowhomes. No one ever cut this rose away, so they must have enjoyed it as much as I did. Other ramblers such as Bobby James are called tree eaters. Yet, others such as Zéphirine Drouhin that are considered house eaters. There is a Cherokee rose in Texas that is reported to span the width of 2 city blocks.

The average climber/rambler will get about 10 to 15 feet tall. I have a lovely older book, Climbing Roses by Stephen Scanniello and Tania Bayard that is fairly complete if you are looking for climbers to grace your entries. It is full of wonderful pictures of what these majasties look like and offers suggestions of different varieties and what types of arbors, fences and trellises they do best on. It would not include the newer varieties of climbers introduced since 1994 but believe me, there is a lot of good stuff in that book.

A display rose garden at the Hershey Botanical Gardens in Pennsylvania. Each of the pillar arbors is about 15 feet tall and 15 feet apart. At each pillar is one New Dawn rose. In full bloom this display will knock your socks off.

Post edited by: Julie, at: 2007/08/04 11:55

Julie, that's news to me. Thank you so very much for letting me know!

40ft seemed really 'out of the normal' but seeing this photo and your explanation I can well imagine it now.

Thank you once again!

Sakura, if you follow the link http://www.vintagegardens.com/roses.aspx?cat_id=1, this is the first of many classes of roses this particular supplier carries. What I like about this site is near the bottom, you will see the shapes of a particular class of roses and about how big they get. They are compared to the average size of a man and a woman. The ramblers are absolutely huge! The thing is, these folks probably know roses as well as, if not better, than anyone else in the US and the sizes they show here are true from my experience.

BTW, this supplier is also one of the best if you like the old world roses and their own root roses are very strong and often disease resistant. This is the one supplier that I've never had a problem with in getting a misnamed rose or having one die after I'd planted it. Their roses are a bit smaller than what you can get at the local nursery, but the quality is much better. I got two this spring and it didn't take them long to get a root set and start growing. I recommend this supplier highly if you don't mind the wait for a rose to grow, or if you don't mind the wait if you order a custom root rose. I have a tendency to select roses they have ready for sale.
Léonie Lamesch. polyantna, introduced in 1899, Germany, parentage: 'Aglaia' x 'Kleiner Alfred'. One of the roses I got from Vintage. This little one has more than tripled it's size since I planted it.

Thank you for the link, Julie. There is sure a lot of valuable information on their site. Also, very good to have your recommendation on their company because, although personally I won't be able to use it since I don't live in the USA, I'm sure many people look for reliable growers.

I found this forum very useful. Try all member to make it best.


Post edited by: ingggbt, at: 2008/09/11 15:10

Post edited by: Sakura, at: 2008/10/16 08:42

Roses are best planted in the fall or early Spring. Roses are the best way to expressing your feelings to others. So keep gifting roses to each other.

Steve Savard

Post edited by: Sakura, at: 2008/10/16 08:41

Hi, you must know lots of information about rose? Does black rose exsits in the world? And what is the total number of rose kinds?

Black Roses - Now there is a novelty. The only true black roses that exsists is the dyed rose. There are roses that are nearly black, but the gene really doesn't exsist within the rose world. Even the darkest and deepest of reds that resemble black are still in the mauve color and will show that off in the sunlight.

Blue roses are much the same, again in the mauve color. There was some experminentation with the blue gene some time ago, and the breeders thought they had found the answer, but I've not heard anything for some time now, so I'm guessing that this didn't work as well as they had thought.

As far as the number of varieties...without the MR11 (the rose Bible), I'm really not sure, but my experienced guess is that there are around 12,000 varieties or more.

Rather a disappointment to hear there are no real black Roses in reality. It always had such a 'mystique' touch to mentioning it

Thanks Julie!

Julie, thank you so much!