In Nebraska, we gave into “old house fever” and bought a gaslight-era place that needed a little TLC. There I indulged myself creating a garden of cold-tolerant Old Garden Roses.
A neighbor gave me a seven-foot-tall wrought-iron fan trellis that he had never used. We secured it to the house with guy wires bolted into the wood trim. I was able to buy the David Austin rose Graham Thomas (left) at the local garden center. This rose is an heirloom rose lover’s fantasy come true. The flowers have the old rose form and are lemon yellow. Yellow is rare among the really old roses. Graham Thomas is a vigorous shrub rose that is easily trained to be a mannerly climber. In Zone 5, it had significant die-back each winter but reached the top of the trellis by the time it bloomed in June. It had little re-bloom during the hot summer and a fair repeat bloom in September.
Upon our return to Tennessee, I was eager to grow heirloom roses that cannot survive prairie winters. Once again I ordered climbers to grow on the fence. We had built a sturdy arbor over a garden gate but it was in deep shade, so the fence and trellises had to do.
Autumn Sunset is a climbing shrub rose related to Westerland. As the name implies, it has golden, orange-tinged flowers. We erected a wide six-foot metal trellis to support it. It proved very easy to train and maintain. Flowering on old as well as new wood, I would say it makes a great rose for someone wanting to try climbers for the first time. It proved to be very disease resistant in my no-spray garden. Unfortunately, burrowing critters ate the root system and that was the end of it.
Photo: Autumn Sunset and Reve d'Or
Reve d’Or right) is a highly-rated Noisette introduced in 1869. The Noisette class originated in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1802. Many roses in this class are climbers that bloom abundantly along the long cane laterals rather than at the tips.
Producing clusters of apricot flowers throughout the season, this is a showstopper well worth the effort needed to keep up with its vigorous growth. This rose never had a disease problem until it developed rose rosette, an untreatable viral disease. I pruned out the diseased canes for a season and then reluctantly removed it to protect my other roses. Now that the arbor is in full sun, we plan to plant Reve d’Or next to it.
I prefer apricot to pink, and the third climber I want to feature here is the hybrid musk Buff Beauty (left). Many roses in this class are wonderful small (eight-to-ten-foot) climbers. Blooming in clusters, it has good re-bloom and is disease resistant. After a decade its wooden trellis needs to be replaced and the rose needs some major pruning. We will get to that in mid-March.
For anyone wanting to learn more about climbing roses, I highly recommend Empress of the Garden by Mike Shoup of The Antique Rose Emporium. It has 100 beautifully illustrated pages on the subject.
Master gardener Ann Bartlett is crazy about roses, and reading her columns and looking at her pictures may drive readers a little rose-crazy, too, or at least drive them to the nearest garden center to buy rosebushes. The Planet warns readers to read responsibly, but has to go now and see a man about a trellis. (The Planet is always a little crazy by February anyway and has been driven over the edge by apricot roses!)
