Hi there! I just HAD to post b/c I am in north-central FL too! Where are you located? just curious... Anyways, we have 3 climbing roses. Candyland, Angel Face, and Royal Gold. Candyland is the BEST by far!! I highly recommend this rose. We bought it bare-root last March and planted it. It is currently around 8 Ft. or so, maybe taller. It is healthy and blooms all season. Last month we counted over 50 buds. It has multiple blooms on each cane. The whole thing was covered w/ roses! We just fertilized it for 2 months in a row and now it has tons of green growth, which I think we need to slow down on that.... Royal Gold has been a dissapointment so far......There are hardly any flowers and when it does flower it blooms so quick and the petals fall off fast! Forget it withstanding any rain! We have an Angel face with a few flowers on the side of the house, it was supposed to have been a Blaze, but they tagged it wrong! :( It's pretty healthy but just doesn't compare to the Candyland climber!! It's raining outside right now but I will try to post a pic later.......

A couple of other suggestions: Purple Skyliner is a great rose, very very prolific bloomer, and I think the big clusters of small-ish purple flowers would be lovely with a large-flowered purple clematis. Perennial blue is also beautiful, but for me basically a once-bloomer. I am excited about Quicksilver; have it on order. I also have Climbing Angel Face, but here in zone 6 it needs protection (it does BS, too). For me, Stormy Weather and Night Owl have not really developed into climbers yet, though they may do so more quickly for you in a warmer zone. I like Christopher's suggestion of a yellow; I would add a suggestion for my personal favorite combo - a pink climber with a purple clematis! The only difficulty here is that if you want them to bloom together, you have to choose carefully: I find that a lot of my clematis come into bloom after the main rose flush. There are of course endless beautiful pink climbers to choose from, so I won't even go into varieties! Whatever you decide, best of luck! I'm sure whatever you choose will be gorgeous!

Sheryl - many Austin roses have turned out to be way taller in warmer climates than the one they were bred in in England. I do not grow James Galway, but obviously it is trying to be taller than 8 feet. The difference in the blooms is remarkable, but there are many roses whose bloom color and even look is affected by the weather. So, you can bend those extra canes horizontally and tie them to something, and they will bloom more. Or, you could cut them off. My Austin 'Graham Thomas' sends out long canes which look just like that towards the end of summer, from the top of its already 8-9 foot height. I cut them off, as there is nothing for them to climb further on, and they fall sideways eventually and are a hazard to passersby. Do what you want - I do not think you will hurt the rose. Jackie

LIV - I'm in zone 5 too and I have a lot of climbers, so you're right to ask for advice before you get too far in your plans and work too hard. We want you to enjoy your roses rather than get disappointed in your first planting, so that's why we're being discouraging about your original plan and encouraging other roses or combinations of where to plant what you have and what you could have. You can plant these NDs but I really wouldn't recommend in front of the house. You could probably prune very hard each year and keep New Dawn a modest size, but odds are you'd also be cutting off most of your chances for rebloom or even a first bloom if you're trying to rein it in. Roses tend to bloom best at their preferred size, and climbers are particularly notorious for not wanting to bloom much until they've spent some time at their height where they want to bloom. That's why we in cold zones want to plant tip-hardy roses that keep their canes after the winter so they can keep growing taller and putting out more laterals. Any climbers will bloom better if you can tie the initial canes horizontally to allow them to put out canes growing up off that sideways cane (we call these laterals). If you don't want a couple of "powder puff" blooms on the end of a tall narrow climber, that's the kind of treatment you want to do for the rose. The narrow width of your trellis doesn't really allow much room for the canes to be bent sideways and as others have said if ND is happy in this spot it will actively and aggressively pull it off your house and attack you and your neighbors when they come to the door. So here's your dilemma if you try to leave the NDs in the front of the house where you have them: scenario 1 - like mine your NDs will not grow beyond knee high in 3-4 years and never bloom, eventually dying, so you're disappointed scenario 2 - your NDs are happy with this spot in front of your house and grow to the size of anything like Oakley's or Daisy's, totally outgrowing this space and making you and your neighbors unhappy scenario 3 - you vigorously and constantly prune back a happy ND to the point where it is now unhappy and puts out only leaves with no blooms I'd opt for scenario 4, where you put them to the sides of your house where they can expand to their heart's content if they're happy, or they won't wreck your vision for the front of the house if you're unhappy. There's a circle off to the left of the original photo that could probably rein in one of the NDs, and there's (unnecessary?) grass beyond that on the side of the house that you really didn't want to mow, did you (smile)? You asked about the type of support that can hold a happy ND in our zones, and my suggestion would be something like the 8'x6' arch where I have a vigorous and aggressively happy Quadra (yes, that's all one rose): If you find that after putting the NDs under an arch like this at the side of your house you end up with scenario 1 and the scrawny runts look ridiculous under the arch, that now becomes an excuse to buy more roses (something we all can help you do with glee). You won't know however if you have a happy ND for about 4 years, since that's how long it takes climbers to mature so be patient and let the set down roots for a while. Moving the roses now when you've just planted them won't set them back particularly but moving them next spring or the next when they start to overgrow their space may delay them maturing even longer What I'd recommend is not putting a rose on the trellises next to the front door. Those are ideal spots for the Jackmanii clematis and that's a vigorous enough clematis to more than fill those trellis spots. Here's what Jackmanii can do if you let it spread out to its heart's content - this is the purple spread out all along the back side of a maybe 10' square cage for my blueberries (again this is one clematis plant): You can contain Jackmanii more narrowly on your trellises but be prepared for a lot of foliage to rein in and encourage on the trellis. This is a different purple clem on the double shepherd's hook (swamped) plus a truly thuggish pink Princess Diana clem attacking a rose on the right. So, if you put the clematis on the trellises by the door, and ND to the side or sides of your house, you now have trellises that are open on the far ends of your house. If you want a rose there, you want something that will naturally stay narrow. Embothrium's suggestion of Aloha is a great one, and mine is cane hardy for me in zone 5. It stays no wider than about 3' if it has something to climb or lean on, and I can get away with loosely attaching mine to another shepherd's hook rather than a trellis, but it would prefer something like a trellis I'm sure. Do be aware that roses need to be attached (like with pantyhose strips or those green velcro plant holds) as opposed to clematis that attach themselves to things. Here's Aloha fairly early in the summer before she has put out a lot of laterals - you can see I hooked her under the support and she's just now starting to bloom off the sides that are facing vertical. She'll pretty much hide the hook by the end of the season, but you can tell that she's relatively happy being tall and narrow. Other hardy roses with similar narrow growth habits include Poseidon (a lavender) or Queen of Sweden (pink fluffy blooms) - neither of these are really climbers but they'll get to 6' or so in our zone and can either be attached to the trellis or climb in front of it. You'd have the option of putting the clematis on these side trellis panels too and then the tall narrow rose in front, and letting some of the tendrils of the clematis twine around the rose for the effect. Jackmanii is a vigorous enough clem to overwhelm a whole lot of climbing roses in our zones, so this might keep yours from being swamped. You can see in the clem photo previously that Scepter'd Isle (another relatively narrow growing rose) is totally being pulled off its usual 6' height by the clem and it's bending down to the height of the 3' A/C unit. The Canadian roses (like Quadra) could handle Jackmanii, but I don't know of any that climb that will stay narrow or mannerly enough for the spaces you have. You might not be able to find the roses we discuss at average nurseries or other stores around town, but there are several nice Canadian mail order nurseries that would sell you these roses at $20 or so, which is quite reasonable and they have great quality plants with more choices. You'd want to wait till spring to plant these though, since it's not an ideal time to plant roses to have them put down a good root system. You're of course free to plant what you want where you want it and if you're happy it's not a wrong choice, but we're sharing some advice to help you avoid frustration if possible. Cynthia