Climbing roses can add a dramatic decorative element and architectural feature to your home and garden. They can be trained to grow on a trellis or over an archway in the garden to significantly enhance the landscape and make wonderful entrances to separate parts of your garden. Grown on a trellis against the walls of your home they can make beautiful frames to doorways and entrances.
To help you get started on your rewarding journey with these magnificent plants, here are a few guidelines to ensure that you enjoy many delightful blooms in your garden well into the future:

Location, location, location � the most important element

Climbers do best in full sun, so ensure that you are planting them in a location which receives at least four to six hours of direct sunlight each day. Sunlight is also important to help prevent mildew and fungal diseases which are prone to affecting roses. At the same time, when considering climbing roses, you need to pick a site that will also allow the plant to climb. Some of these plants can grow over 12 feet tall, up to 30 or 40 feet.

All that climbing takes a lot of energy and to ensure that you provide your climber with the best possible start, make sure the soil you have prepared is rich in humus and well-drained. Whilst these plants like to be well-watered, they do not like to stand in water, so the soil shouldn’t be marshy, but well drained.
Now is the time to put in place any trellises or other supports for the climbing roses. If you put them in after you’ve planted your rose, you run the risk of damaging the roots.

Climbing roses are not naturally able to attach themselves to a structure through tendrils or suckers so your support needs to be something that the rose canes can be loosely secured to. Either thread the canes through the support or tie them loosely with suitable cord. Your support also needs to be quite sturdy to hold the weight of the growing plant � remember climbers can grow quite large.

Here’s a golden tip: if you train your climbing roses more horizontally than vertically you’ll also encourage more blooms, so your support also needs to be wide.

Go Easy on the Pruning

Unlike shrub rose bushes which need regular pruning, climbing roses require very little pruning for the first two years. This is because in many of the older climbing rose varieties, blooms appear on second-year canes and if your climber has been pruned back each year then it will produce far fewer flowers. You should prune your climbing rose every three or four years only and then remove only the small, twiggy canes and the oldest woody canes. Keep the longer, younger canes to twine through the support so that you maximise on the blossoms that the plant will produce.

If you follow these easy guidelines you’ll soon enjoy a magnificent climbing rose as an attractive feature in your garden.