Jeanne Stockdale wrote in message
...
I have just received 2 climbing roses as a gift - Dublin Bay and Penny
Lane - and am trying to find the best position for them. At the back of
one
of our flower beds we have a 2.5ft ornamental wall beyond which is a paved
area. If I were to plant one at each end of the back of this bed, would
they
"trail/ramble" along the wall or do I need to find somewhere where they
can
climb more vertically

Would appreciate any advice

Jeanne


Hi Jeanne,

The last thing you should let them do is climb vertically. If you do, all
the flowers will be at the top; you will just see bare stems. They will
produce so much more flower if you train them horizontally on wires. They
will also be easier to dehead and prune. If you really want a vertical
flower display, it would be better to train each of them on an obelisk,
winding them around the structure so that, once again, they are more
horizontal than vertical. The horizontal training (or winding) encourages
the rose to produce more flowers.

I have a rose by my front gate which is wound around an obelisk-like
structure. It is always admired in the summer when smothered with flowers,
and admired again in winter for the way its bare branches spiral around the
tower. Incidentally, the rose I have trained in this way is the Japanese
ground-cover rose Rosa 'Nozomi'. The proprietor of my local GC refuses to
sell this rose because of its single season blooming. However, not having
seen R.'Nozomi' trained as a climber before, he stopped in his tracks,
"wowed" all over it and asked what it was. It hasn't changed his commercial
policy, but I think it changed his private one! Some of the ground cover
roses make great small pillar roses.

Spider