We have pyracantha, lady banks, green hopseed, and a yellow flowered vine who's name escapes me now. The only one that grows fast and covers a big space is hopseed. The only mess it makes is from the female plant 1/year when it blooms and drops them all over the place. The lady banks grows reallyfast and long. It s not really hard to trim it to keep the tendrils on your side. You can kind of pull them back over to your side of the fence and tuck them in sideways to spread it out, or just cut them. Very forgiving in whatever you do to it. There is a yellow and a white, it sounds like you have room to try a lot of things. Oh yes, re: roses, remember that they drop their leaves in the winter so there would be some open space for a couple of months.

Carolinakate, You've probably already transplanted your white Lady Banks; sorry I'm so late in seeing your post. But I wanted to tell you of my experience with them here in Atlanta. I have both white and yellow Lady Banks roses. One of each is growing on a chain link fence in my front yard. A second yellow one is growing on a trellis in the backyard. All three are doing great, growing by leaps and bounds - and I mean that literally. Although many books and magazine articles will tell you that roses can be grown in pots, I have had zero success with that. They may bloom, but they seem so much happier and healthier in the ground. I definitely agree that your rose wants to be in the ground, because Lady Banks roses grow so large that it's hard to imagine what kind of pot would be big enough. My white Lady Banks is on a south-facing four-foot-tall chain link fence almost directly underneath a very old oak tree. I think the trunk of the tree is not more than 4 feet away from the fence. And the base of the rose is planted directly in front of the tree trunk, because that happened to be the middle point of the length of fence. Thus, the rose gets some sun throughout the day, but it is almost always shaded to some extent by the branches of the oak tree. Those are high branches because the tree is so old. The most direct sun the rose gets is in the late afternoon. In just two years, the rose has grown to cover almost the entire fence, about 20 feet in either direction. The only pruning I have done is to remove twiggy growth at the base of the rose because it caught onto my lawn mower and was in the way. Otherwise, I just tie down alal the new growth about once a month. I have probably used 30 or 40 rolls of velcro plant tie by now, for each Lady Banks rose. I have never fertilized (afraid to). I definitely agree that you should never train - or allow - these rose branches to weave through the chain link fence. Not only would it make a mess, but I believe that eventually it would pull the fence up out of the ground. I trained the first long branches to the top of the fence. After that, I trained each new branch - it throws out new branches, about 7 feet or more long, after every rain - to the ones beneath it. I tie them down from both the front and the back of the fence, trying to keep about the same number of branches on each side for balance. I cannot emphasize enough to you how massive this rose will become, and how quickly. As I said, mine now spreads about 20 feet in two directions, and is over my head in a solid mass of branches (I'm 5'4" tall). If this keeps up, eventually I may have to start cutting the new branches off, or use a stepladder to tie them down. However, I'm afraid that cutting them back may just encourage the plant to throw out more. This white Lady Banks, much more so than my yellow ones which are a year older, has already created a solid screen between my house and the sidewalk in front. When my Lady Banks roses are in bloom, people stop their cars to look. It's quite a show. As far as bloom, I notice you are in North Carolina, so I wonder if perhaps your bloom this year was lost to a late frost or cold spell. It seems to me that my yellow Lady Banks roses are not nearly as susceptible to cold spring weather. Once they are covered in buds, those buds will open and make a great show even if it's still cold and windy. But I lost almost every bud on my white Lady Banks in its first spring when we had a late cold spell. One other thing you may already know is that these roses are extremely easy to propagate by cuttings. If you have the room, you could try one in each of the spots you've mentioned. I have a feeling that they all will do well.

The thing about Lady Banks roses is they are fussy about how you prune them. I have a 150' hedge growing up the chain link fence that borders the alley behind the house. We used an electric hedge trimmer to trim them and after growing lushly for several years, they are losing that lushness - lots of dried up branches creating an unsightly hedge that looks like it's dying in the middle. It's not, it's just unhappy. I was told by someone, and subsequently researched and found to be true, that if you prune them at all, it needs to be at the juncture of the branch to the main trunk. This is *far* too labor intensive for that size hedge. We are gradually replacing with hop bush. But to answer your question, two plants across a six foot span should fill in nicely. And yes, they are supposed to be thornless but of the 40 or so plants, several have thorns. Try hop bush instead. Great plant. Lady Banks will do best if left to grow wild.

Fond memories of a Lady Banks the grandparents had meticulously trained over their lattice arbor in Oak Cliff inspired us to try it in a couple places when we moved to Dallas. First one I toasted trying to espalier it in a dry bed on a shadeless south facing brick wall... proving they can be easily killed given a brown enough thumb. Second one thrived with 6+ hours of summer sun on the north side of a wood fence for 9 or 10 years. We took it out when we converted the pool beds to deciduous/less dense plants to deal with drought and duck problems, though probably would have gone anyway due the growing effort needed to keep contained and looking good in the space we had for it. Would use it again in a minute in the right location.