Roses: The New Climbers

Flower & Garden Magazine, Feb, 1999 by Ann Hooper

The year 1999 will most likely go down in horticultural history as the year that great climbing roses began to dominate home garden landscapes. If you've been looking for wonderfully floriferous, disease-resistant, easy-to-grow roses to enhance your landscape, this is a spring you'll love!

This spring's climbing rose introductions offer nearly everything gardeners want in ever-blooming perennials: an abundance of flowers, a wide array of colors, easier maintenance than ever before and the personal satisfaction of growing truly great roses.

The new climbing roses are worlds different than the ones your grandmother grew. Those disease-ridden once-bloomers were beautiful at the height of their spring inflorescence, but suffered any number of devastatingly unattractive ills during the remainder of the summer.

Today's climbers bloom continuously, providing constant, vibrant color on fences, trellises and arbors, or growing freely in an otherwise drab corner of the yard. Not only are they more disease-resistant than their heirloom predecessors, but many of them are some of the most carefree of all the modern roses. This is a definite boon for those of us who may prefer not to use chemical fungicides, those who don't have the time or the inclination to provide constant care for roses, or for those novice rosarians who have no clue what they're doing when faced with a rosebush.

Not only are they easy to grow, but climbing roses offer gardeners a whole new world of options for exceptionally beautiful landscape plantings. Climbing roses, of course, do not cling to fences the way sweet peas or clematis do. They grow long, arching canes that can be tied to a support for a pillar effect, or the ground to create a fountain of devastatingly beautiful bloom. They can be fastened horizontally to a fence, or just left alone to sway in the breeze.

The best of the 1999 climbing rose introductions are easy to grow and extremely floriferous throughout the growing season. They offer interesting and unique colors that provide a spectacular display in any part of the yard that gets sun most of the day.

`Fourth of July' is an explosion of eye-popping color and apple-rose fragrance. With canes that grow 10 to 14 feet, the plant produces velvety red flowers striped with white that bloom along the entire length of the cane. This is the first climber to have won the prestigious All-American Rose Selections award in 23 years! It was tested in trial gardens around the country for three years and was found to have consistent color and vigor in every climate.

It's very hardy in the northern climes and will quickly produce long, strong flowering canes each spring to replace any that may have been damaged by cold winter winds. The foliage is bright green, shiny and extremely disease-resistant. The flowers grow in big, colorful sprays that last a long time on the plant and then are quickly replaced by the next bloom cycle.

While northern gardeners will be ecstatic with `Fourth of July's' performance, gardeners in more temperate climates will find this variety is bound for consideration as the "rose of the decade," according to many of those rosarians who have tested it for the past three years.

Yellow roses are notorious for their susceptibility to blackspot, a nasty disease that causes roses to lose their leaves. But times do change! `Climbing Autumn Sunset' not only has superb resistance to blackspot and other fungal diseases, but it has everything else, too -- rich fragrance, great winter hardiness, strong vigor and exquisite apricot-gold color.

This variety is a sport (genetic mutation) of the much-loved shrub, `Westerland.' Both get their disease resistance from their Rosa kordesii lineage. This translates into an easy-care plant that will delight yellow rose lovers from coast to coast.

`Autumn Sunset' grows 8 to 12 feet and is wonderful as a pillar or climber. It has shiny green foliage and a free-flowering habit that starts the first year. The flowers are large and double and grow in clusters, providing a vibrant display. They have a strong, fruity fragrance that's guaranteed to delight garden visitors.

`Autumn Sunset' performs well in all climates, but northern gardeners will be particularly thrilled with this variety. It is very winter-hardy, requiring little or no winter protection, and the flower color is best in cooler weather. No matter where you live, you'll love this rose, but in areas where winters are cold and climbing roses are often difficult to keep alive, gardeners will think `Autumn Sunset' is just to die for.

If pink tickles you, there's no better climbing rose than `Berries `n' Cream.' Its novel flowers of old rose pink swirled with creamy white grow in bouquet-like clusters on strong stems. They are more cream in cooler climates, but always emit a moderate fresh-cut apple fragrance.

`Berries `n' Cream' is a great plant, too. It throws canes that are 10 to 12 feet long, and they don't have a lot of thorns, making training a more user-friendly chore. When trained on a fence or wall, this variety displays a veritable wall of flowers. The large, glossy, disease-resistant leaves set off the unusual flowers to perfection.