A mature Cecile Brunner came with our house in Algiers Point, across the river from New Orleans. A tenant of ours was working off part of his rent by sanding the house. I wasn't watching him and he cut CB off four inches above the ground. Yes, he cut through some wood that could have been firewood, three and four inch diameters. CB burped, and started regrowing before I had the second coat of paint on that part of the house. Make sure to make a really heavy duty arch. That CB collapsed an arch for us, too. Lest you think that it was just the great NOLA soil. that poor rose was planted in a 24" swath of ground between the cement base of the house and a cement driveway left over from when the lot was a lumber yard.

Last year I planted Madame Alfred Carriere on a fence along the driveway which has sun all day. She didn't do so well the first year and didn't produce many blooms, but has suddenly taken off this year. Not many thorns and nice bendy canes. Grows like crazy, from what I can see this year. There are tons of flower buds right now and I like that she starts flowering from close to the base. The blooms are beautifully romantic - a soft white blush pink which goes with most things and the fragrance is really lovely. They don't last that long indoors, but from my experience so far MAC seems like a healthy, vigorous, sweet smelling rose.

Well, after some googling, my best guess is a Dorothy Perkins rambler rose. I did read something while searching about people commonly mixing ramblers with climbers, so you get the big flush from the ramblers but then have a more sparse but steady repeat bloom from the climbers. I wonder if they may have had both planted there originally for this purpose, but the cecile brunners (along with the tea roses that I recall being there when I was very little) didn't survive the neglect.

My experience with Malvern Hills in Zone 9b for almost nine years was, it is a HUGE plant which flowers only on the ends of EXTREMELY long canes. We attempted growing it on a block wall, which it ate, then took off to the birch trees next door. As long as I allowed its huge wands to invade the lawn area, there were flowers. In the intensity of heat and sun, the flowers lasted a few, short hours before burning to potpourri. Attempts to keep it cut back to its twelve feet wide section of fence and not permit it to advance more than four or so feet into the lawn resulted in lots of foliage and very few flowers. For a huge space where the climate might dwarf or otherwise inhibit it more, it should be a great rose. Zone 9b did nothing to inhibit its "enthusiasm". I finally had to remove it from the garden. If you'd like something prickle free, good repeat, decent scent but with a larger flower, you might consider Cl. Yellow Sweetheart. Kim