Climbing roses are a distinct group of rose varieties defined by their long, arching canes that cannot support themselves upright. They are prized for adding vertical drama, allowing gardeners to cover walls, fences, and arbors with color and fragrance. Climbing roses maximize bloom space in small areas or create a focal point in a larger landscape, but they require external support and guidance.
How Climbing Roses Grow
Climbing roses cannot cling to surfaces on their own because they lack the specialized mechanisms of true vines, such as adhesive disks or twining tendrils. Their structure consists of long, vigorous canes that are flexible when young but become woody with maturity. These canes must be physically tied to a support structure to ascend vertically. If left untrained, the plant grows vertically, concentrating flower production only at the top due to apical dominance. Training the canes manipulates this habit, encouraging lateral shoots along the entire stem to maximize the display.
Mature canes typically reach 6 to 12 feet, allowing them to be fanned out across a wide surface area for better coverage.
Climbers Versus Ramblers
The terms “climber” and “rambler” are often used interchangeably, but they represent two distinct classifications of roses with different growth habits. Climbers are generally derived from modern roses like Hybrid Teas and Floribundas, resulting in stiffer canes and larger, more refined individual flowers. Most climbers are recurrent bloomers, meaning they flower repeatedly throughout the growing season from late spring until autumn.
Rambling roses, by contrast, are more vigorous, producing long, flexible canes that can sprawl over large structures. Ramblers are predominantly once-blooming, producing a single flush of clustered, smaller flowers, usually in late spring or early summer. This intense but brief flowering occurs on older wood, which dictates their specific pruning requirements.
Training and Pruning Requirements
Successful flower production in both climbers and ramblers relies on proper training, which involves positioning the main canes horizontally or at a 45-degree angle against their support. This deliberate bending interrupts the upward flow of auxins, the hormones that suppress lateral bud growth, prompting the buds along the cane’s length to sprout flowering side shoots.
The gardener must gently tie these primary canes to a trellis or horizontal wires using soft materials to prevent constricting the growth of the canes.
Pruning Recurrent Climbers
Pruning requirements differ based on the rose’s blooming habit. Recurrent-blooming climbers are pruned in late winter or early spring, focusing on removing dead, diseased, or damaged wood. The main structural canes should be left intact. Side shoots that flowered the previous year are cut back to two or three buds from the main cane. This removes spent flowering wood and encourages fresh lateral growth for the coming season.
Pruning Once-Blooming Ramblers
Once-blooming ramblers should only be pruned immediately after they finish flowering in the early summer. Since their flowers develop on old wood, pruning them in the spring would remove the current year’s buds and eliminate the bloom. The primary technique for ramblers is renewal pruning. This involves removing up to one-third of the oldest, thickest canes down to the base to encourage new, flexible growth for the following year’s display.