GardenBanter.co.uk - 15' CecileBruner Tee-Pee Quest.

On Sun, 8 May 2005 18:29:20 -0400, in rec.gardens.roses you wrote:

A week ago someone in this group spoke of making a Tee-Pee of sorts for
a Cecile Bruner climber out of 15' (tree limbs?) . My question is what
wood/ piping??? is tall+strong enough to hold up what I would use= a 20
foot Noisette-- my 1st, white Lamarque rose bush in Florida= (will
bloom all yr). It was a great idea and got me thinking of building said
Tee-Pee or {WHITE "snow covered" (FL- get it?), MOUNTAIN}- but I'll
need to know what materials to build it out of?? THANKS for any ideas!
The ony climbers I have now are on store-bought arbors= Joseph's Coat,
Golden Showers and Pink Perpetue.
I also have; Cary Grant/ Brigadoon/ Angel Face/ Betty Boop /Double
Delight/ Miss All American Beauty/ Peace/ Mrs B.R. Cant / Artistry/
Brass Band/ Kentucky Derby/ Starina/ Kirstin, if anyone has any
questions on them.

If you want strength AND invisibility, rebar (reinforced steel bars
like they use for concrete) is probably your best bet. I would
probably do a central "teepee" and then place two vertical 10 foot 5
feet apart segments on either side of the structure in a couple of
years. This way, you'll be able to "grow" the mass of rose outward
from the middle. You could tie them with horizontal bars for
stability. In fact, for maximum stability, you might do *pairs* of
each pair and tie *them* off as well. That would look something like
this from the air:

x x x x x
x x
x

x x x x

I'm not sure if formatting will preserve this "chart". If it does, the
center diamond is intended to represent the teepee and the others are
intended to show the horizontal members. If you don't want to do that
elaborate of a structure, you could just do one or two poles per side,
but it won't be as stable. Also, you won't need the side poles for
three years. Otherwise, it will just look funny. However, if you do
it, by the 5th year, you should have a 20 foot mass of rosebush 10 -
15 feet tall. If you want a REALLY stable structure, you'll consifer
having the crossmembers welded together. I'd also make sure that you
sink the rebar at least three feet in the ground. To keep the
underground portion from prematurely rusting out, you could buy some
appropriately sized electrical heat shrink tubing to sheath the bottom
part with and then seal the end. Make sure that the tubing extends
about 6 inches above ground level. And if you want to preserve the
rest of the structure, you could paint it with primer, although it
would probably take years for it to completely rust through. And the
rust color will help hide it.

Here's a picture of my rosebush currently. Remember how it was growing
up a tree and that now the tree has fallen.

http://www.pbase.com/teleburst/cecile_brunner

The pictures start on the second row.

The size is about 15 feet on the long side and about 10 feet from side
to side. The tallest blooms are a little over 6 feet tall (on the
arched canes). On the last picture, you can see a brand new basal cane
growing on the left side. This cane is already the thickness of my
little finger and stands about 4 feet tall. I'm interested in seeing
what shape the bush takes now that it's not growing UP something. I'm
thinking about building a similar rebar structure this year or the
next, but right now, I'm more concerned with hiding the downed tree
trunk.