Robert - If you're looking for another MIP type climbing Bourbon I would highly recommend Mme de Sevigne (mine's from Ashdown but I do not see it listed as available this season). Even though she's been cut back constantly she was over 12 feet tall at the end of her third year. I grow her trained to a pyramid trellis, on the left in this photo in Spring 07: Good rebloom, excellent fragrance. My experience with both Variegata di Bologna and Honorine de Brabant (which is essentially a once bloomer in my garden) is that they are better grown fanned out horizontally rather than more vertically - that way the spring flush is maximized because they will bloom all along the canes. Louise Odier is one of the easiest roses to train - she reblooms, blooms on old and new wood, and can be grown either horizontally or vertically. I grow 3 Coquette des Blanches, trained together on a wide tripod - I find it bushy rather than leggy so I'm not sure it would make a good climber. Gregg and Phillip at Vintage believe Edith de Murat is really Mme Cornellison, which is a sport of Souv de la Malmaison, so petite by definition. Good luck George

Yes, you can grow many climbers as shrubs. Depending upon the room you have and how vigorous the variety is, your results can very widely. Here, Banksiae is kept machetied as a shrub like an oleander or juniper. It paves itself with flowers all over the surface every spring. I have grown Silver Moon as a large, freestanding "shrub", allowing it to build on itself until the result was easily six feet high, eight or so feet thick and easily twelve to fifteen feet long. Altissimo and Sally Holmes were kept as "shrubs" for eighteen years. I didn't have any difficulties with the canes snapping, even though this was a very windy site in a canyon in the mid Southern California desert. You'll find that many "climbers" tend to grow shorter, but quite thicker canes when they have to support themselves. The tissue formation is used to reinforce the strength of the cane at the expense of elongating it. You'll find this more successful with Cl. HTs, floribundas and Large Flowered Climbers than with rambler types because of their tendency to produce heavier, stiffer canes. Another idea you can try was very successfully used at The Huntington by Clair Martin with the Austin Roses. Self pegging is where you take stakes for the initial, heavier growth, then wind the new growth back on itself in loops or swags so the plant ends up supporting itself to a large part. I've taken large, heavy stakes to create uprights like fence posts, then securing the canes to them like the rails of a fence. That creates screens in places you normally wouldn't have them, adding height and privacy to areas. I've used it to provide a surround for garbage cans on the edge of the garden; to block undesired views of dog runs, a/c units and ugly neighboring structures. It makes a nice break between the drive and garden, too. If you want a ready made example of the answer to your question, drive around and look at all of the Dr. Huey plants which have been hedge clippered into shrub form. Unless it's a very severe climate where it freezes, I'll be most cities have MANY examples of it. Kim

I do not have MEC or MDE. Do have Louise Odier. When I did spray, this one did not keep 2/3 of leaves. But maybe that was just my perception, cause a tall lanky bourbon does not necessarily have lots of leaves even when healthy. But she looked awfully naked and did not repeat very often or very heavily. IMO, the blooms on LO, especially the ones after the spring flush, are not big and lucious enough to be worth the trouble of a bourbon.

My Louise Odier tends to be floppy and only blooms in June/July then she's done, but the flowers are exquisite. Unbelievably perfect blooms. But she does sprawl outward. Paul Neyron is an upright grower and does not flop...his canes are very thick & strong. Mine gets about 5 feet tall here, with moderate winterkill each year. He blooms profusely as the photo below will attest....biggest display in late June, but he will provide me with blooms off and on all summer. He is healthy here until the end of summer which is when I've gotten lazy on spraying, then develops some moderate BS. Those HUGE fluffy blooms always attract attention....he is one of those showstopper roses. Mrs. John Laing is one of my favorite roses. She blooms as well as most floribundas here, has a delicious old rose fragrance, and the blooms are drop-dead gorgeous. She will be healthy most of the summer as well, but if I neglect my spraying regimen she will blackspot. She isn't a huge rose, but does grow upright....mine stays at about 4 feet...but I do get winterkill here in zone 4 on most everything. Here are some pics to tempt you with.... Celeste MRS. JOHN LAING PAUL NEYRON