Since you live and garden in a warm climate, I can tell you that the odds of the heights on HMF or ANY rose advice you might get from any database are WRONG. In warm climates, most roses get way taller than they say. In my garden, they get twice or even three times as large.

The only thing to do is to get advice from someone who gardens near you, or in a similar climate who grows the rose you are interested in. Don't just ask about height, ask about width and depth - I have some tea roses in my garden which get 8 ft high, and 7 ft wide and deep. The books (mostly from England, of course), and databases will tell you they only get 3-4 ft.

Jackie

One other thing to keep in mind with regard to height is the associated habit of the rose. In other words, a rose which grows rather lax and spreading may have a tall "height" listed on HMF for when it is (usually or often) grown as a climber. Another is that roses which are more accepting of harder pruning can be kept a bit shorter than their stated maximum heights if you find they grow taller than desired for where they are planted.

:-)

~Christopher

This is a question that has plagued me for years. No matter how much research I do it seems like the one I plant to the back turns out to be a shorty and the one I planted up front becomes a bean stalk! I almost always end up rearranging them at a later date after I see how they're going to grow.

Visit old gardens and cemetaries that have roses. Living in Italy as you do, you may find gardens associated with old homes and villas open to the public that have older specimens. What a wonderful excuse to visit gardens and old homes!

Cath

One thing I've noticed is that roses very often will grow much larger where there is more rain and also more humidity. My roses pretty well stopped growing during the drought period and even my tea roses are stunted compared to what is seen in the humid and rainy South, for instance. Heat is not the only deciding element; rain and humidity can have just as great an influence in how large roses grow.

Ingrid

I struggled with this too Bart. I tried to guesstimate as best I could, but I'm just going to get friendly with my shovel and move things around if they don't work.

I'm with Seil. You almost just have to plop and pray that it fits, because you really never know. FWIW, I try to search mentions of particular roses on here to get a better idea of what "might" happen.

There's ALWAYS a lot of guesswork involved. Everyone here has given part of the answer. You might compare the size your mature roses have reached with estimates you've seen, to get an idea how big roses get for you. You can do this by class, since some classes of roses will be happier in your conditions than others. But then roses will likely grow differently in different parts of your garden; and, since, like me, you do limited watering, you might have roses that stay a moderate size for years, then shoot up when they're established and then get a rainy summer. Or a rose will run into some adversity and grow backwards.
Melissa

Thanks, everybody.This makes me feel better about the way I do things, because I see that everyone has the same problem basically. It's so true that warm climate does not necessarily equal larger plant; in those two decidedly drought years nothing grew much at all. Now, after these past months of good rain,I'm seeing exactly what Melissa has described. My Frederic de Prusse-supposedly a small climber-has become an enormous thug,and I'll have to move a poor, stunted little Deschamps yet again (that poor thing has gotten moved already too many times...bad, bad bart).Laguna has become a monster. General Stefanik, too, has become huge; I shouldv'e thought of that as a climber, not a shrub, and I'll be stuck moving this very beautiful and rare noisette that I got from Ducher called Cornelie (it's not Belle Vichyssoise; it's got medium dark, mauve flowers; it's not on HMF and it seems that only Ducher has it. I'll have to order from them again, and get a few more...) which is being swamped. So, now along with my new roses, I have to find and prepare spots for these moves...

I agree that water has a lot to do with how big a plant gets. My late rose mentor, Vernon Rickard, who owned Almost Heaven Roses, said he thought that water was much more important than fertilizer. I find that in my garden roses vary tremendously according to location. A duplicate of a rose can be much smaller in a dry area with more root competition. So if you want to grow a very vigorous one but don't want it so big, you could plant it in a more challenging location. Do you have a hill? I grow some roses directly beneath trees. They get enough light coming in at an angle but have some root competition, dry conditions and some shade.

Here's some under a canopy from two trees:

In my front yard where there is richer, more moisture retentive soil and more sun Clotilde Soupert is much larger. Here are the shade trees:

I think some roses have minds of their own and have not read their catalog sizes.

My much loved. But trying to reach the house Darcey Bussell. I had lost track of how tall she was in the plum tree and thought I would wait to see her cane top when the leaves fell. Today I noticed her reaching for the banana tree

I like Darcy bussell a lot, too. Beautiful colour and good ,consistent blooming. I wish mine would get huge...
Erasmus, what are those roses that you have under trees? how many hours of sun do they get? My entire garden is on a hill,btw. I have a spot that only gets 3-4 hours of sun at this time of year (a lot more in summer,but it's only HOT afternoon sun) and I'm trying some roses there: Purple Skyliner, Joasine Hanet,narrow Water... I decided to choose roses that are declared as "shade tolerant" by either HMF or the Peter Beales' website,resoning that if a given rose can tolerate shade in England, it ought to do fine in Italian "shade" ,which is probably a lot brighter,if only because we have fewer grey days,in theory.

bart, that picture of the roses tumbling down the hill is magnificent. I think we need to see more pictures of your garden, which looks quite dramatic. You've accomplished a lot in a very challenging situation in terms of terrain, restricted watering and this site not being near where you live, from what I understand. Bravo!

Ingrid

Well yes, I agree that Bart is a tad reticent with the camera and we are dying to see some pics....but I think the hill photo is from Erasmus?

So sorry, erasmus, and thank you camp for pointing that out so tactfully. I want to give credit where credit is due, and, erasmus, I'd love to see more of your beautiful garden, along with bart's. Suzy, I would really like to see your Crepuscule but I gather the camera is not always your best friend, although you've been much more forthcoming in the last year or two. I accept that not everyone is as maniacal as I am with a camera.

Ingrid

Yeah, I know I "ought" to post photos, but like others on this forum, I am not a fan of photo posting.First of all,I find the little digital camera that i have hard to use; I can't really tell what i'm photographing,or if it's in focus, etc, because it's not a reflex, it just has the little screen that is supposed to show you what you are doing, but what with light reflecting off of it, and the fact that I am a woman 40plus whose up-close vision is kind of iffy without reading glasses, it's entirely hit-or-miss. Then there's the fact that I am not very agile with the computer. Our old one crashed, so now I have to re-learn all over again how to view the photos from the camera on the computer,and frankly, neither I nor my DH (who instead does not have my difficulties about computers)has a lot of leisure time. Even when(?) I eventually do learn that, the photos inevitably will be of the wrong size for posting, so then I have to learn how to re-dimension them. All of this takes up a lot of time...so though I thank you warmly for your interest, I can't promise anything,especially considering that bare-root season has almost arrived for me, and I'm currently very busy planting out potted stuff and getting ready for my new roses. Maybe some day I'll be able to get a better digital camera and that might change things, but for now...

Hi. Well, I'm not sure if the picture I posted looks like roses are tumbling down a hill. Most of my garden is on a gentle hill. The ones I posted under shade are at the top of my garden but there's no steep drop off. I think about Kim Rupert's hill when I think about giving roses more of a challenge to curb too much growth. He can show you his hill if he will. But I planted all the trees in my garden about 26 years ago, and I love the trees and would rather keep most of them. Most of my roses are doing ok with some shade but certain areas are declining. The shade area in my picture has more light now than before because a large red maple broke in a storm. The additional light has helped some roses . In my picture you can see three Clotilde Soupert plants, and behind them there's a Scepter'd Isle. Oklahoma and The Fairy are also in that bed, and some hydrangeas, and Iceberg. All grow and bloom well. I don't know how much sun they get..morning sun at an angle and afternoon sun. They probably don't get sun from about 11 to 2 or 10 to 3. My front yard gets morning sun and then shade from about 1 or 2 pm, and they seem to like that. I put roses that tend to burn in the part of my garden that gets afternoon shade. Bart, I am low tech as well and don't even own a cell phone.
Here's the fortuitous damage to my red maple: