I have a few of the climbers on your list so I can give you a bit of feedback on them in particular. Instead of New Dawn, take a look at The Awakening. It is a sport of New Dawn that blooms better, and also has more petals than New Dawn. Pat from Roses Unlimited turned me onto it. I was looking for a New Dawn when she highly recommended The Awakening instead, and boy am I glad she did! She had both of them in stock at the time, so that didn't affect her recommendation of one over the other. As far as hardiness, The Awakening wins hands down vs. Zephirine D. Both my Z.D. and The Awakening are 5 yrs old now. The Awakening has survived every winter except one with zero winter kill/dieback each year. The only year that it had to be pruned back was due to rabbits eating it down to nubs over the winter, not due to winter kill. On the other hand, my Z.D. has died back to the ground every winter except one, this year. This winter was the first winter that some of my Z.D. canes survived, so it may end up growing taller this year than previous years. Thus far, my Z.D. has reached a max height of about 6 or 7 feet tall where The Awakening is about 14 feet tall and would be taller had it not been eaten by the rabbits two years ago. The Awakening blooms all season long and is a good repeat bloomer where my Z.D. blooms once and then may put out a few more sporadic blooms the rest of the year. Both have been disease free for me, but I do spray all my roses for BS throughout the season. Where Z.D. has The Awakening beat is scent. Z.D. smells heavenly while The Awakening has little/no scent. Another big difference is the thorns with Z.D. being completely thorn free while The Awakening is a thorny monster. Due to these differences, my Z.D. is trained to grow along the railing on my front porch where people come into contact with it a lot. My Awakening on the other hand has been trained to grow up the chimney on the side of the house where the thorns stay out of reach. If I had to chose just one it would definitely be The Awakening, but I do love them both. I also have a Dublin Bay climber (red) but it was just planted last year and I pruned it back to the ground this spring, so I can't give you much feedback on that one just yet. If you can find one, definitely check out The Awakening. Here is a shot of my Awakening a few years ago when it was only about 10 feet tall. I have since had to add another 4 foot tall wire mesh panel above the one in the picture to accomodate it's additional height. The year after this pic was taken it had covered the additional 4 foot panel reaching about 14 feet tall. The following winter was when the rabbits ate all the canes down to nubs. :

I have a long board fence in front of my house which matches my horse fencing. I have let it weather rather than painting it and it looks fine. The fence is a good distance from the house. I have roses, both climbing and shrub, along the fence. Since no painting is involved, the only maintenance other than the roses is keeping the grass from growing along the fenceline - the roses are well mulched, still working on mulching under the fence. I have all colors - pale, bright, pinks, yellows, apricots. Makes a beautiful show when blooming. All colors look good on the fence. I would definitely opt for the vinyl fence. If I had to paint around some of these roses [Prairie Princes, Chuckles and New Dawn come to mind] I would be scratched to pieces, not to mention the daunting task of pulling the canes back. Ken quoted one of my favorite sayings - work smart, not hard. Enough hard work to do even if you do work smart around my place! There are many kinds of fences, surf the web and look around - I particularly like the old fashioned loop wire, hard to find, but lovely. I would rather spend more time with the roses than painting a fence - which will need to be done fairly frequently, especially white. I have a horse farm - at another farm, we had all white painted fences. I swore when I moved I would not make that mistake again, since I don't have swarms of helpers. Even if you do put pale colors on a white fence, you can have colorful annuals or clematis at their feet to liven up the color. So many possibilities!! Have fun! Judith

Below is the info. that Floweraremusic (zone 5) in Washington gave on her 2020 winter-survival. She has alkaline clay with rocks at bottom like mine & less snow in winter: "My hardiest roses are the Canadians. John Davis, John Cabot, Wm. Baffin, Morden Sunrise, Morden Blush and Morden Centennial, Victorian Memory aka Isabelle Skinner, also a Canadian rose. All these only have tiny bit of tip damage and bloom a lot with no special care. Also, my Hybrid Perpetuals only have tip damage after winter. Magna Charta, Mrs. John Laing, Black Prince and Marchesa Buccella. The only negative is they don’t have long enough cutting stems. All my Austins are very hardy. The one I just can not grow is Jude. Leonardo da Vinci is super hardy and always healthy. Quietness comes through winter very well. Even Rouge Royale survives beautifully. Cinderella Fairy Tale is very hardy. Gruss an Aachen also. Ballerina and Marjorie Fair are both hardy. Poseidon, Princess Charlene de Monaco and Crazy Love didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. The surprise losses this year are Quicksilver, and Dames de Chenonceau who is left with only 1 cane. Versigny is also reduced down to almost nothing. This was a mild winter with very little snow. " Floweraremusic (zone 5). From StrawChicago (zone 5a with hard black-gumbo alkaline clay & less snow but with freezing rain in winter). Versigny didn't survive winter either. So I lost Versigny TWICE. Besides Versigny, other wimpy own-root roses that don't survive winter well: Paul Neyron, Anna's Promise, Pink Peace (own-root died 1st winter, but grafted-Pink Peace survives many winter), Elantyne, Jude the Obscure, Young Lycidas (bought as grafted-on-Dr.Huey, now with only one cane), Mary Daly, and many floribundas don't survive my zone 5a: Pink Chiffon, Sheila's perfume, King Arthur, Deep Purple, Shocking blue, Honey Bouquet (survived 1 winter). Polka Climber (survived 1 winter), Cloutilde Soupert (died twice on me). Sutter's Gold didn't survive winter, same with many fragrant mini-roses from Burlington nursery. Below are my hardy OWN-ROOT roses in my zone 5a alkaline clay, only Double Delight, Young Lycidas and Lavender Crush are grafted-on-Dr.Huey. Bold-faced are the very vigorous ones: Own-roots with 3 feet of green canes: Carding Mill (since 2012), Princess Charlene of Monaco, Duchess de Rohan, Crown Princess Magareta (since 2012), Zepherine Drouhin, Lady of Shalott, James Galway, Lavender Crush, Queen of Sweden (gave away but very hardy), Poseidon (right below the rain-spout, dug down to 2.5 feet), Scepter'd Isle (very big & hardy own-root but gave that away with its lousy scent). Own-roots with 2 feet of green canes: La Reine (many winters), Blue Mist (since 2012), Prairie Harvest (since 2014), Mary Magdalene (since 2011), Evelyn (since 2012), Radio Times (since 2011), Pat Austin (since 2011), Christopher Marlowe (since 2011), Golden Celebration (since 2011), Lilian Austin (gave away but very hardy), the Squire, the Dark Lady, Wise Portia survived 4 winters but died in poor drainage clay, Dee-lish (since 2015), Twilight Zone (since 2016), William Shakespeare. 2000 (since 2011), Comte de Chambord (since 2012), Princess Anne, Sweet Mademoiselles, Aloha climber, Orchid Romance, Bohemian Rhapsody, Marie Pavie, Lagerfeld (since 2017), Frederic Mistral survived 2 winters but died when I didn't winter-protect with leaves, Sonia Rykiel (survived 3 winters) but died in freezing rain winter, same with 1/4 of the street-trees in my neighborhood, Excellenz von Shubert (since 2013), Own-roots with less than 1 foot of green canes: Gina's rose, Tchaikosky (since 2015), Cornelia (since 2018), Bolero (few winters), Peter Mayle, Sharifa Asma, Neil Diamond, Amber Queen, A Shopshire Lad, Strike it Rich, Old Port (since 2012), Veteran's Honor (many winters), Double Delight (grafted on Dr.Huey), Savannah, Tess of d'Uberville, Gene Boerner (since 2014), thornless Yves Seedling (since 2013), Stephen big Purple (since 2012), Louise Este, Mirandy, Crimson Glory, Liv Tyler survived 1 winter but needs winter-protection, Rouge Royal (bought last year with no winter-protection). Annie L. McDowell (survived 2 winters but needs a wet-spot since it's almost thornless), Nahema (survived 1 winter then died during freezing-rain winter), same with Eyes-for-you (drought-tolerant and doesn't like freezing wet winter), Souvenir du President Lincoln, Madame Issac Pererie and Madame Earnest Calvat, Firefighter (survived 2 winters) but died since it's next to tree. Bayes Blueberry (survived many winters but I gave away), Charles Darwin (gave away since it fades badly), Arthur Bell (since 2012 & killed it since I don't like the flowers). StrawChicago.

Hi everyone, thank you all the wonderful input! What a wealth of information. This gives me so many different options and plant combos to try. Cori-Ann, thanks for all of your input and advice based on my climate. My soil is funny enough directly the opposite of yours, very rocky and hard and I have successfully planted all kinds of lavender without too much trouble (have spanish, french and english lavender in different areas in my front yard), though I wish I had your soil, it sounds lovely! I have also successfully planted roses with some amendment and careful watering, though many of my roses are planted or will be planted in a raised bed since two of my austins almost died last year because the soil wasn't to their liking - to be fair I also neglected them when work got busy during the hotter months. But my eden, skylark, and heritage are all doing great, and lots of my neighbors have floribundas/HTs that seem to be thriving. Aquaeyes, thanks for the tips on how to plant the two together. I'm going to try that! I am also planning for lavender more in front with roses more in the back so I'd plan to put down drip irrigation in the back of my roses which I'm hoping will give the roses enough water - the lavender would just get the runoff from whatever soaks over - though agreed with smithdale that my english lavender does seem to want more water than my French and Spanish kinds. For anyone interested, I'm planning Hidcote lavender in this bed. What I may do is plant lavender first and only one rose as a test to see how that works for a year. And if everything seems happy. I'll buy more roses. If not, I'll stick to the lavender since I try to keep my front yard low maintenance - most of my loved roses are in my side and back area. So whatever I chose for the front will have to be easy and able to tough it out if it wants to stay =). Really appreciate all of the wonderful suggestions here!! I'm going to do research and come up with a plan. If anyone else has any recs for hardy roses that aren't fussy and don't mind hard, clay, rock soil, let me know!