Don Juan can get 10 to 12 feet long in Florida, but I'm not sure about your climate zone. Help Me Find says he gets 8 to 12 feet tall. He has a hybrid tea look to him, both in flower form and in the stiff canes. The longer canes will make lots of side shoots though, that will flower. He's a beautiful climber, and eventually fills a trellis out very well. He's actually considered to be more of a pillar type of rose, because of the stiff, upright growth habit. It can take a while for Don Juan to "get going". The first year he seems to squat a little, and will sometimes bloom before growing much. My new ones that are on fortuniana are squatting right now and blooming some. Not much growth yet in terms of height. When he starts to take off, he's gorgeous. I had some magnificent Don Juans before the hurricaines a few years ago destroyed them. That's why my current ones are new plantings. One of my favorites. Sandy

Many of us do this. If keeping potted for a short time a 2-3 gallon pot will work. For longer periods use a 5-7-10-or 15 gallon pot for maximum growth while potted. Using a smaller pot will confine the roots and cause the bush to be smaller until it's transplanted into the ground. As the roots expand in it's new home, it'll quickly catch up.

The pruning should be done in early, early spring, and NOT in the fall or early winter. If you are pruning fall and spring, that definitely is too much pruning. I'm not sure what you are pruning for, so it is hard to give suggestions. You don't need to prune just for the sake of pruning. Here are some reasons I prune in my zone 6 garden in Kansas: 1. Prune out brown and dead wood. 2. Prune to cut off winter/freeze damage--I do a test cut near the end of the cane. If the center (pith) is a bright white, there is no winter damage and I do no more cutting back. If the center (pith) is "off" (kinda tannish), I go down the cane about 4-6 inches and cut again. If the pith is still not bright white, I go down another 4-6 inches and cut again--and so forth, until I reach bright white pith. This kind of pruning is usually limited to hybrid teas which, sometimes being a bit iffy temperature wise, suffer more from winter cold. The hybrid teas sometimes have to be pruned back nearly to the ground before good pith is available. (Check the hardiness number on your new roses--make sure they are winter-hardy for your zone.) Assuming most of your roses are hardy enough for zone 6, you won't need to do this kind of pruning for most of them. 3. Prune to control height--cut back at most by 1/3. But it is rare that height is a problem here, so I rarely prune just to control height. At most I may give the rose a very light "haircut" overall--a couple inches at most. 4. Occasionally I prune a bit for shape--a branch is jutting out too much, making the rose look lop-sided, so I trim back that branch a bit. I don't usually need to do much of this kind of pruning. 5. If a branch got broken off as a result of the winter winds, I make a smooth, neat cut immediately below the breakage. This rarely happens also. 6. With climbers, I avoid cutting back the long canes. Instead trim back the "laterals" growing off the long canes--make them about 6 inches long. It is those laterals that will probably produce the next set of blooms. 7. Occasionally a rose gets much too crowded in the center, so I thin it out. This rarely happens, however. 8. Prune to rejuvenate an older shrub. Cut out at ground level 1 or 2 old canes (they will often look grey and barklike). Do that each year for several years. New canes should be produced each year, and in about 3 years, you will have a "new" and "younger" rose bush. Right off hand, those are the major reasons I can think of for pruning. And note that most of them are only occasionally needed. The only ones I regularly do every early spring are numbers 1 and 2: deadwood, and freeze damage. Hope that helps. Kate

I have a new Don Juan I bought at walmart a few days ago (I know bad, bad!) in a 3 gallon pot on a trellis. It was a good size for the price and full of little velvety buds. I tried to walk on by but the fragrance called out to me ...buy me buy me. I said," no Sir, I've heard about your reputation and I'm not that kind of girl!" Then proceeded to push my cart around to the other side of the table to see what else there was. Oh no! More Don Juan's on the other side with even more seductively red fragrant flowers. Geez, what's a girl to do when Don Juan is calling your name and then he jumped right into my cart? Well that's what I told my dh anyways. I put this guy into a 7.5 gallon for now. I am sure I will have to pot up to a larger size once I figure out where he will go permanently. Just make sure you have good drainage holes and work in some extra perlite and compost into your potting soil. The flowers are a darker red but my camera didn't capture it.