Carol Klein’s roses are climbing their way to the top!
Bring flower power and a cottage garden feel to any plot by investing in glorious climbing roses
PimagePPerhaps the most abiding
of a cottage garden is a welcoming front door, its porch swathed in climbing roses. You may not have a country cottage, but even in the smallest garden, climbing roses can add flower power on a generous scale – and with only the modicum of expense and after care. To buy a climbing rose may cost you as much as a few perennials or half a dozen packets of seeds, but it’s an investment that’ll pay huge dividends over the years in terms of glorious colour and pure enjoyment. There are hundreds of climbing and rambling roses to choose from and there are many different ways to grow them. They’re climbing plants, but not self-clinging, although in the wild there’s no doubt their thorns evolved to help them climb up into the trees as well as providing an efficient deterrent to grazing animals looking for their next meal.
We need to give our roses the help they need to elevate themselves to new heights. A wall may be the answer, in which
‘To buy one may cost you as much as a few perennials, but it’s an investment that’ll pay huge dividends over the years’
case we must provide a matrix of strong supporting wires and be prepared to train our roses so they follow the guidelines we’ve laid out for them. In a classic fan-trained rose, encouraging shoots to grow horizontally will induce lots more lateral growth, resulting in many more flowers than we’d get if shoots had to fend for themselves.
If you haven’t got a suitable wall there are plenty of other options. A substantial arch, constructed from wood or iron, can comfortably accommodate a couple of roses. Purists might plant the same rose on either side so they meet seamlessly overhead, or you may prefer to make the most of the opportunity by using two different roses and maybe combining them with clematis.
Some of the best examples of these two growing together can be found at Rosemoor, the RHS garden in Torrington, Devon. There, they’re grown along pergolas, up stout wooden frameworks, over metal arches and, outside in the rest of the garden, rambling roses are grown into trees.
Here at Glebe Cottage we’ve one of the most famous of rambling roses, ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’, growing through a copper beech and spanning the track to send its flower-festooned growth through the branches of our crab apple ‘Golden Hornet’. Another one, ‘Sander’s White Rambler’ grows over a pergola. In common with so many of these roses it has delicious perfume.
The difference between climbers and scramblers is that climbers tend to flower longer (especially true of David Austin’s English Roses). They usually repeat flower and their blooms are bigger and often held singly. Ramblers are vigorous, often producing strong new shoots from the base, and tend to have masses of smaller flowers, often single, and most have just one glorious show per year.
Ramblers should have dead flowers removed immediately after flowering, but many just get on with it after that. Climbing roses tend to need training, tying in to the structure supporting them and are pruned in late autumn or the following spring. l Plant a climbing rose now – see page 34.