Climbing Roses

Soils:

These roses grow very well in heavier clay soils (as do most roses) as long as they are not wet soils with standing water. If your soil is a regular or sandy soil, add compost to the planting hole and add several shovels per plant every year early in the spring. Also water regularly each week of the summer to keep the plant growing. Remember that a rose blossom is over 90% water and reducing the water (drought) immediately reduces flower production.

Planting

These roses are planted just like any other rose. The instructions are here

Sunshine

And again, just like every other sun-loving rose, they require full sunshine (at least 6 hours of full hot sun a day) if they are to bloom properly.

Pruning:

Pruning a climbing rose is easier than you might imagine. There are instructions and a basic diagramme right here.

Varieties

There are a wide range of roses that are utilized in this way. Let me make a few points about which you might have success with.

In USDA zones 5 – if you have a cold garden, then focus on ‘Blaze’ (red) and ‘New Dawn’ (pink) as the hardiest of the climbing tea roses.

Warmer than USDA zone 5? Then you can grow just about any climbing rose you want. Pick from the thousands of varieties that are available

Colder than USDA zone 5? I recommend you investigate the ‘Explorer’ series of hardy roses. There are some in this family e.g. ‘John Cabot’ that make excellent climbers but are also bone hardy. If you try to grow the tender hybrid tea climbing roses, they’ll die off for you in most years.

Real bottom line - you have to try growing these climbers yourself to pick from all the wonderful plants out there. You'll fall in love with them just like all other rose gardeners. :-)

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