Someone else with voles. I've been battling them for years and they are the only thing that has ever gotten the best of me. If you create ideal conditions for them to thrive, you will probably get them and it is a challenge to get rid of them. And what are ideal conditions you ask? In their natural state voles live in the soft composty forest floor where the soil is basically compost. The don't live in hard dirt or are they very deep. They live in a maize of tunnels where they eat roots. They love rose roots. I've seen them kill a healthy rose in no time at all. The rose starts to wilt and soon it falls over. You pull it out and there are no roots... just a stub. Most people don't have a vole problem because they don't create the ideal conditions for voles to live. I do because my beds are just like the composty forest floor and one year I lost about 60 roses. Some entire beds. What can you do? You can dig them up, flood them out, impale them, or try to poison or gas them. I made an impaling devise to impale small areas and not miss them. You need to cover the area entirely to make sure you stab every vole. You need to clear the area before you plant again. You can try to protect the roses from voles when you plant either individually with wire or the whole bed. I surrounded some beds individually and I protected the entire garden with wire mesh fence. I didn't vole proof it but the damage has been minimized. It sounds like you have made a good vole environment so you will have to get after them. As for Don Juan, it has nice form but it is a bad climber. I would replace it with something else. Good luck.

I have grown three climbing roses from the Canada rose breeding program that are cane hardy here in MN zone 4a. They are William Baffin, John Cabot, and John Davis. They are really large shrubs that can be trained as climbers, but completely winter hardy except for tips and late season new growth. WB is the most hardy and disease resistant, however I have never seen any repeat flowering despite claims to the contrary. WB is also very vigorous to the point of being difficult to control. He will turn into a small tree or a thicket if left alone. John Cabot is relatively easy to train on an arbor or trellis, but also has a tendency to spread out. Moderate to light repeat that varies from year to year for no apparent reason. To my eye, the flowers are more appealing than WB's. Blooms are semi to lightly double in a fuschia tinged pink. Can get minor fall spots if not sprayed. John Davis is, I think, the most civilized of the three. The four inch flowers are clear pink and fully double. JD is the least vigorous, but still a good grower after the first two years. JD has a reliable repeat. JD can get a touch of Powderey Mildew in years when PM is around. Quadra and Rambling Red are two red climbers that grow OK here, but both have moderate to severe die back in the winter. They do not have the spectacular spring flush of bloom that the first three do, but are consistent bloomers over the season. Because of the winter kill, they do not get over six to seven feet for me and show no sign of getting out of hand. Three climbers that I grow as pillars or tall bushes because they die to the ground or mulch line every winter might be worth trying if you are willing to do extensive winter protection are: Climbing America, Golden Arctic, and Roberta Bondar. Good luck. Charles

Joey: Very good questions. Here are what I learn about own-root roses: 1) Where they are bred and the TYPE OF SOIL & weather predicts where they will be successful. Roses bred in acidic & rainy & less sun England will be successful in acidic & high rain East coast. But roses bred in alkaline & hot & sunny Southern France will be successful in alkaline clay & sunny garden. 2) How vigorous the root is? The newly bred roses ARE VERY VIGOROUS as own-roots, and can survive BOTH Pakistan 113 F hot summer and my zone 5a winter of -20 below zero. Vigorous roots are both long (at least 2 feet deep) and spreading wide. Vigorous roots are also THICK to store water in dry summer/winter. Dee-lish can die to the crown, but the root is so deep that it can go for 1 month without watering, either through a cold & dry winter or hot summer. Dee-lish has a climber as a parent (Graham Thomas). If a rose is bred with a climber in its genetics, it will have deeper root. 3) It's the selection of the fittest. In breeding roses, there will be many seeds ... and only the fittest seed sprout up to be the most vigorous root or to be disease-resistant. The other dozen to 100 seeds either don't germinate, or sprout some wimpy plants that black-spot & less petals, or can only bloom once a year. This answer your question directly, breed roses in your cold zone and see which seed can sprout in extreme cold temp., and which seed has the deepest root to survive the winter. English roses, bred in a colder climate than France: most have climber-heritage or Old Garden Roses' genetics, and English roses are actually favored by hot climate folks in Pakistan due to the vigor of their roots. Deeper root = more weather resistant. I hang out in Facebook Fragrant Rose Lovers group, where most Pakistan posters are. English roses are favored in both extreme hot and extreme cold climate due to the toughness of their roots to survive long periods of drought.

Ms. Lee, I'm sorry to be a stick in the mud, but I recommend a change of plan. From your altitude, location and description, I think large climbing roses are going to have a very hard time getting very far up either of those structures. I'm in 5B Fort Collins, and I have 4 New Dawn, mentioned above by Domino, which are now 6 or 7 years old. At best they've been only half cane hardy, staying alive 3 or 4 feet up from the ground (when covered) and most years, pretty well dying to the ground. Before that I had Don Juan on this small pergola, which was totally hopeless. I haven't given up. This winter I've covered the entire pergola (about 5x4 x 7 foot tall) with plastic and I've put one of those pipe freeze heater cables in there with the roses. The pipe heater only turns on when temp drops below 35F. There are some of those really hearty roses, but they're not that pretty, slow growing, and they're not re-blooming. Maybe there's a variety out there somewhere that can withstand winters here that is still pretty and blooms through the summer, and gets big enough to cover a medium size pergola. Maybe I'll figure out which variety that is over the next decade or two. But I'm not going to get my hopes up. Zone 5 in Wisconsin is a TOTALLY different story than Zone 5 here in Colorado. It's the extremely dry air, bright hot winter sunshine, and dramatic temperature fluctuations throughout our winters that desiccate the rose stems. I know I'm going to get pelted for this, because it's moderately invasive, but my recommendation is that you plant a couple of Virginia Creepers toward the back of your large pergola. These guys will fairly well cover the pergola in 4 or 5 years. It's very hardy, and has little miniature grape like fruit that hangs down, and looks nice. It also has nice red color in the fall. At the front of the pergola either don't have anything at all on those front 2 columns, or maybe put some medium size trellises there and plant some of the larger size clematis there, or maybe instead plant some honeysuckle. Then maybe put some regular (not climbing) roses in front of that, or nearby. For your pergola over the pond, I think I'd put honeysuckle on two of the corners and large clematis on the other two. This one is small enough, a really hearty grape vine might be able to cover it, (maybe valiant) but since there's a pond under it, that would make it rather tricky to pick the grapes! Good luck, Bruce