". . . Thro twilight pale,
She climb'd and climb'd, and peeped into the dim
Nest of the nightingale."
Lytton
There are few garden jobs I face with as much dread or as much relish as pruning my climbing and rambler roses. Tackling these unruly giants, with their oft times vicious thorns, born on canes that eventually form into huge inpenetrable mounds, or thrust themselves skyward, out of reach, arouses my imagination. I become David, challenging Goliath or Xena, battling barbarians.
Watching the growth habits of several old rambler roses we found growing on a dilapidated fence on the perimeter of our property, then witnessing their prolific blooms the second summer after buying our old 1910 farm house, and puzzling over how to care for them, kindled a passion for these old survivors that I'm sure will last until the end of my gardening days.
When I joined our local Rose Society fifteen years ago, it was because I wanted to learn more about them. I was also curious about other roses that grew in our garden, roses that were bushy, but did not not look or behave at all like Hybrid Tea roses - the only roses I had ever had experience with - and that experience was very little, indeed. My inquiries were met with scorn. Back then Hybrid Teas reigned supreme and "Old Garden Roses" and Ramblers were no better than weeds. In the opinion of one old Rosarian, I questioned, they were probably root-stock roses. If this was true, I questioned the logic of using such outragously gorgeous, heavy blooming plants as root-stock.
Over a period of years I slowly learned their identities, "Dorothy Perkins," "American Pillar," "Doctor Van Fleet," "Exsela," "Velchenblau" and "Laurence Johnston." By then I had come to know their habits intimately and had added many new Ramblers to my collection. I now have close to twenty, all crammed in my quarter-acre garden filled with hundreds of other plants.
HOW TO SELECT THE PERFECT CLIMBING ROSE
CLIMBERS AND RAMBLERS, HOW ARE THE TYPES SEPARATED?
Keeping these giants within bounds in my garden is serious business so I start as soon as a freeze blackens their leaves and the canes are visible. If the leaves don't fall off I shake the canes. Most books on pruning Climbers or Ramblers say they should be pruned after they bloom. However, it's often very hard to see what's happening. The canes, covered in leaves and in active growth, shooting out new canes for next year's blooms, seem hopelessly tangled. If I'm lucky, and the canes are within reach, I dead-head after they bloom.
