It's like anything else you can go too far with anything. Sort of like, do you kill Bambi or not, while at the same time opening a can of Tuna for the noon snack. Just remember, we got rid of the mosquito problem by spraying DDT all over the place --- along with almost wiping out Eagles etc etc etc. We are now back to slapping mosquitoes dead while we admire the Eagles flying overhead. Your call......

I don't spray because blackspot really doesn't bother me at all. I don't spray for insects because I don't want to kill any of the beneficial insects. Sometimes in the spring I will spray my once bloomers with horticultural oil to fend off thrips. Honestly don't even know if it works, because I usually forget to use it. Right now I think I have a good mix of beneficial insects, bees, birds and frogs, don't want to lose them.

When we started growing roses, we realized that given what we wanted to grow and how we wanted to grow it, choosing disease resistant varieties was as easy as choosing ones that needed spray. Then I was dealing with a very high maintenance toddler, and not spraying became a given. After years of listening to people complain that they don't have time to spray, or they can't spray because they can't fit it in around the rain, it is so much easier to just not worry about it.

I'm on the lake and I know everything I put in the soil drains to the lake so I like to be very careful. I do spray occasionally. I usually do so before my spring show and maybe later towards fall if disease pressure gets very high so the roses will hopefully go into winter healthy. But even there it's hit or miss sometimes. Like Altorama some spots and bug damage on the leaves doesn't bother me all that much any more.

Having learned other ways to eliminate the bugs that eat my roses, I no longer need to spray them. Blackspot can be a problem and it bothers me more than it does altorama, so I occasionally spray a fungicide, but I hate to do it and usually look for excuses not to. Instead, I search out carefully for disease-resistant roses--but some aren't as bs-resistant as I want, others do fine without spraying.

The biggest problems with sprays of various kinds is that they can have a negative effect on the environment and on the person spraying.

I'm not sure which Bayer product you are using, but many of us on this forum do NOT recommend Bayer's 2-in-1 or 3-in-1 combo type products. The only Bayer product many of us use is the fungicide (nothing else mixed in it) Bayer Garden Disease Control for Roses, Flowers, and Shrubs.

If you grow mostly or all hybrid teas, you will probably have to do some spraying for blackspot. Hybrid teas aren't the most bs-resistant roses, unfortunately.

And I repeat: spraying anything but a strong stream of water from the hose isn't needed for most bugs.

Kate

I stopped leaving water out for the birds to control tiger mosquitoes--they are really aggressive in attacking humans--I haven't seen any this year. There seem to be just as many birds in are yard without an open water source. Much easier to go outside without using bug spray--I can usually squish the slower mosquitoes. It also helps if you can garden early in the morning, when mosquitoes are less active. But, it you have a lot of mosquitoes and need to work on the garden in the evening, the danger of catching diseases may outweigh the health risks of using bug spray.

I don't spray because of the possible negative effects on me, my family, and our pets and anyone else that might come in contact. It's a matter of choice...

I'm slowly building a garden with all disease resistant roses for my area and seeking other methods to control insects besides spraying.

Sorry to hear about your husband...

Mary, I want to wish you & your husband much success in his medical battle and I truly hope he has a complete recovery. That's really the main point. A bit of blackspot or insect invasion? Not really earth-shattering, just a bit annoying.

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts! I only have time in the evening to get out in the garden. I seem to have quite a few bugs. We live in a flood zone and it is pretty swampy here. Even with the spray I am having a problem with a bug that lays eggs or something right under buds in the stem.

Why are the 3 in one products worse than other sprays?

Until recently, I worked on Wall Street, and had to go on days with little sleep. With two young children, I don't have appetite or time for roses that need pampering. Life is too short for that. I did spray quite a bit this year for rose midge. In short, artificially keeping a rose healthy and happy is not on my list of priorites at all. I will give them a nice big hole filled with compost when I first plant them, and I will prune from time to time. But this is about it. As far as my roses go, if they blackspot like hell, they can count on being shovel pruned.

Mary -- also wish your husband a full recovery.

It is a bad idea to spray a pesticide unless you actually need it. Not only can you kill off stuff that is beneficial to roses, but the bad guys can develop a resistance--just like those "superbugs" that are hard to treat. There are also good reasons for holding off on fertilizer--you can burn the roots of newly planted roses--better to give them some time to get established. Same thing with the heat of the summer and issues with getting them enough water--fertilizer may make things worse. Some roses , like Carefree Delight, seem happier if I don't give them any fertilizer--the edges of the leaves darken when I do.

Mary, so sorry to hear about your husband's illness.

The main problem with the Bayer 3-in-1 is that it works systemically, or from the inside out. Since it travels through every part of the rose, including the pollen, it kills bees as well as the undesirable bugs. As you've probably heard, bees are in decline and it's at least partly because of the neonic (neonicontinoid) pesticides which kill very effectively, but indiscriminately.

The Bayer fungicide is pretty marvelous, but for those who want an organic garden, even that is considered taboo. Myself, I use the Bayer fungicide, use the water hose for most bugs, and in extreme cases spray a little Sevin directly on the bug in question, let the bug die, then rinse the rose off! lol.

Oh, and once you use something like 3-in-1, you start a vicious cycle that requires you to KEEP spraying, because you kill off the bad guys' natural predators as well, which normally will keep the less-desirables under control.

By the way, the only place I can find the Bayer fungicide locally withOUT the insecticide is at Lowe's. You can get it online as well: BAYER ADVANCED Disease Control

John

I'm building a garden, and I need all the help I can get to convert all the organic matter I add into good stuff to improve the soil. So I don't want to kill off any of the crew by using fungicides or pesticides.

:-)

~Christopher

Wish your husband for a speedy recovery.

I spray for bs and pm, bugs. I use Bayer's 2 in 1 for rose midge. I sprayed Bayer's complete insects killer & Bioneem for rose midge in the spring, but couldn't keep up. I have more than 500 roses, and it's always raining here. Today I saw some JBs, I am going to spray Bayer's complete insects killer tomorrow night.

I don't spray, I prefer a garden that is natural, messy, and filled with bugs butterflies, bees, birds, and yeah, I have world class blackspot. I'm not sure how long most of my roses will be in my garden, due to blackspot, but I'm new to roses and not married to them. Some of my roses are doing really well., and they can stay, but, there are other plants itching for the space.

Mary best of luck to your husband and good wishes to you in helping him in the fight. My mom has brain cancer and it is a terrible disease.

I don't spray because of many of the reasons listed previously. We just do not know the long term impact of the chemicals we use, and I like to evaluate the vigor of my plants without artificial help. I am aiming for a garden that is comprised of plants that do well here and will be easy care for the long term.

Zack-- I just looked up tiger mosquitoes. How terrible. So sorry you have to garden around that.

First, may I say that I am sorry for your husband's health issues and wish him a full recovery and you the strength to make it through such a life altering situation.

There was a time that I sprayed my garden, regularly with fungicides and 'as needed' with imidacloprid, keeping it as "perfect" as I could make it. As I learned more about building the life in the soil and about the loss of our bees, I eased back on some of that chemical use. The final straw for me came after my DH was diagnosed with leukemia. I'm not at all saying that I thought the two were related, but DH's disease made me reflect deeply on our environment's affect on our health and possible triggers of things going wrong in our bodies. I took all my bottles of chemicals to the hazardous materials recycling and never looked back. After my DH passed I moved to a new home, creating a garden with only roses from my old place that had proven themselves disease resistant on their own and adding new roses that I have carefully researched for health. The roses that I grow now don't require life support in the form of chemical sprays, receiving only sun, water and compost. And even though I have more insects here than at my old home (Japanese beetles in addition to the rose chafers I was already used to seeing) I hand pick when I have time and accept it all as part of the garden when I do not. It works. There is still the beauty there that I need in my life and I feel good about my little corner of the world. I certainly do not look down on anyone who chooses to use chemicals; it was just my choice to make and I am satisfied with my choice.

I use the Bayer Advanced and another similar fungicide. Early in the growing season, I try to spray fairly regularly because that is when the blackspot is very bad. Right now it's been very hot so I'm in my 4th week of not spraying. I do see some blackspot on some of the 'divas' that are most susceptible, but others, even HTs look fine. I have resorted to spraying for thirps this year. They have gotten worse every year and pretty much destroy all the blooms on a lot of roses. You only spray the buds before they open, so it's less of a risk to bees and other insects.I used to have a bad JB problem, but the last few years it hasn't been that bad. I usually just hand pick them.

Like others, I have had some health issues and I'm very wary of what chemicals that I use in the yard and also in the home. The most important thing is if you are going to spray is to protect yourself and use the chemicals properly. That goes for household chemicals as well.

Mary, I don't know what type of brain cancer your husband has, but just in case she can be of any help, I suggest you contact Uschi Fitzpatrick. If you google her, you should come across a site about 'brain tumour survivor', and be able to contact her through that. If not, I do have a phone number for her. Sadly, her husband, Don, did eventually die of the disease, but she has put a lot of time and effort into researching how to beat it, and I think she could offer you help, or at the very least, emotional support. She is one of the loveliest people I have ever had the good fortune to come across, and I think, would be glad to help you.

Best wishes,

Trish.

The following may be of interest relative to the wisdom of utilizing fungicides and insecticides in home rose gardens when there is the possibility of the wife becoming pregnant and/or there are young children present .

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-07-autism-adhd-high-children-chemically.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you are new to this forum, the following are some of my earlier threads relating to possible health effects due to the use of one of the fungicides frequently recommended in this forum for the treatment of blackspot on roses.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1705364/new-tebuconazole-full-paper-human-risk-assessment?n=2

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1634622/blackspot-tebuconazole-based-sprays?n=6

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1643641/concerns-of-tebuconazole-resistant-isolates

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1673894/precautionary-principle-and-tebuconazole?n=28

Thank you all for the good wishes for my Husband's health! I will have to do some more research on this topic. I don't have the time to hand pick bugs but I will look into other methods of pest control. Luckily our children are grown and no children live next to us. The garden where I spray is along side the house and fairly isolated. At one end of the bed I have lavender flowers and those are covered with bees and wasps so it seems like the spray is not hurting them. But I will do more reading and see if there is something else I can do that doesn't take a lot of time. Thank you for all the responses, I got a lot of food for thought!

Spraying requires time, effort and money, things I know I don't have extra of. I used to spray at any sign of insect damage or blackspot, but following best practices of watering (not too much, not too little), disinfection of pruners and spraying off spider mites has allowed me to get off the "spray" schedule (two plus months yay!).

If I get a really bad infection of thrips, I will spray spinosad, since it can really decimate a plant and move on to mess up the others. But I am finding more reasons not to spray and my roses have been relatively healthy and clean.

I'd rather spend my time pruning and taking cuttings then trying to do the right mixture of whatever chemical, which might or might not affect the smell/prettiness of the blooms on the plant. I do like fertilizer though and find investing in that worth the bigger, prettier leaves and blooms.

When first we began to grow roses, we sprayed weekly with a rotating arsenal of chemicals -- as we were taught to do.

We quit doing that when our dog began to seizure every time we sprayed.

Yes. The garden chemicals we used were the "trigger" that started him seizuring. We quit cold turkey.

Now, we have almost no insect problems because our neighborhood has developed a healthy colony of predatory insects (and lizards).

Roses which have persistent fungal diseases are removed, and replaced with other roses, which do not.

And I am no longer worried that my garden will trigger asthma attacks in my neighbors, or myself.

I do spray, for blackspot and very rarely for chili thrips. I spray because I live in an area where you almost cant grow roses if you don't spray. In hot and humid South Florida, we have a year-round growing season. I usually only spray in the summer or if there is a long span of rain predicted (2-3 days or more). But mostly I spray when I see that there is lots of morning dew on the leaves. In which case, rain or no rain, I will need to spray.

I tried having a no spray garden here, but even the most disease resistant varieties still get defoliated at one point or another.

This summer has been an incredibly dry summer for us. We have had some rain, but rarely any dew, which has been great for my roses. The toughest times are in the fall and in the early spring where cooler temps make it black spot heaven around here.

Chili thrips come around in the late spring before the summer rains arrive, and then I use spinosad. And sometimes again in the fall, but the summer rains seem to keep them at bay and I only spray when absolutely necessary.

I don't spray for regular thrips or aphids. I just live with them. Usually at one point of the year they go away. Aphids get the finger squeez or the hose. Regular thrips usually only bother the outside of the rose and when it opens i pick off the offending petals and usually get nice blooms anyway.

I have streamlined my spraying by using a no-mix hose end adapter with a quick release do-hicky thing at the end of my hose. I have 3 of these. One contains liquid fertilizer, one has Bayer disease control and one has Honor Guard.

They all have quick release thingies on the ends and I just pop em off and on as I need them. They don't emit a nice fine mist, but they soak the roses quickly and thoroughly, and the fat droplets are less likely to be inhaled. I also don't have to pre-mix which keeps me from being exposed to the concentrated liquid (the most dangerous aspect of spraying). I leave the liquids in the hose end sprayer because its not as likely to get clogged as it is when you use a fine mist sprayer. I have never had a clog actually. (although I used to have TONS with my fine mist sprayer).

I can literally stand at the end of the rose bed and spray all the roses on both sides without even having to walk through the sprayed part. I think this has made my life much easier when it comes to spraying and I can do the whole garden in a matter of minutes.

My prayers with you and your husband, and for your roses, too!

I do not spray, except very occasionally with a bee-friendly friendly organic oil which probably has little effect on the blackspot. I only have about 20 roses, so I can hand pick Japanese Beetles and squish them. Had very good luck this year in that I caught the first wave, squished & left squished beetle bodies. Have not seen another JB. The blackspot is ongoing. I decided I grow these HTs for their blooms, not the foliage, so blackspot doesn't freak me out like it did a few years ago.

I have an autoimmune disorder and am very sensitive to household & garden chemicals. My area drains into a river only a mile or so away. I want to lessen my impact on the environment and on my beleaguered body, so I don't spray. As I have Lyme Disease, I ABSOLUTELY spray myself with tick spray and use tick management drugs on my dog and cat. It's a delicate balance, and I commend you for seeking input to inform yourself.

Peace to you and yours.

My roses are interplanted with other perennials and annuals. I think this helps to keep down disease and confuse rose insects. I choose to not use insecticides or herbicides for any landscaping purpose. I washed away some aphids in the early spring with the hose and later had rose slugs which seemed to bother mainly only one rose plant. I will assess my roses in the fall and make note of any that are ugly with disease. Those I will get rid of in the spring provided they even make it through the winter.

Once, at an ARS convention, a speaker took questions after his talk.

A woman remarked that she sprayed her roses every week, and said that the insecticides also did a good job of keeping insect pests away from the big fat strawberries she grew around her roses. She said her husband so enjoyed them with his breakfast.

A whole audience or mouths dropped open . . . In a hushed voice, the speaker asked her if her husband was feeling alright . . .

Jeri, Did she say what kind of spray she was using? The veggie and fuirt farmers use sprays too, we all eat sprayed veggie and fruits daily or someday, sometime. I don't buy organic veggies and fuirts, they're too expenisve. I hope the sprays she was using are rated ok for fruits. I didn't spray my grapes and raspberries, next year I have to spray the grapes, they got black dots on them. I'd have to ask one of my friends dad who is a fruit farmer. I know they spray their grapes and apples. I know neem oil and Bioneem are ok for veggies and fruits. I used Bioneem in my herb garden, not for the herbs, for the roses growing in the herb garden....the roses sneaked in there somehow. There are sprays can be used for veggies and fruits.......

http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/CoopExt/4DMG/VegFruit/organic.htm

http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/pests/pesticide/hgic2770.html

It seems amazing that anyone was able to garden or farm at all before insecticides and fungicides.

;-)

~Christopher

Summer -- It was one of the Bayer combination products. NOT something you would want to eat, I assure you.
The speaker explained to her that, yes, it killed "bugs" but enough of it was going to do real harm to someone who ingested it.
Of course, there's no saying that she LIKED her husband. You never know . . .

Thanks Jeri, she may not like her husband, or she didn't know how harmful it was. It might be very well someone at the nursery told her what to use. Let's hope her husband is Ok.

Chris, I don't know how much you know about farming my dear friend. I believe farmers would have a lot of issues farming without sprays, why spend money for sprays if there was no need? The companies who make farming sprays won't be exist today. Right now I know I need to spray something next year for my grapes, 2 years in a row I have had black rot on grapes. I am just wondering if Nike or Henry know about these sprays: copper soap, mancozeb, muscadine, scuppernog, ziram, immunox fungicdei.........which one is less harmful?.....interesting stuff? :-) I am glad I am not a fruit farmer, my grapes is totaled for another year without any spray. It was my own choice -no spray on fruits, now I got no fruit; I'm glad I treated roses for midge this season, now I have blooms. :-)

http://nysipm.cornell.edu/factsheets/grapes/diseases/grape_br.pdf

http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/fruitpathology/Bulletins/Controlling%20Grape%20Black%20Rot%20in%20Home%20Fruit%20Plantings.pdf

I think that as fewer people farm and farms increase in size, spraying makes things more manageable -- and small differences in yields add up. We've also become rather accustomed to artificial levels of perfection not attainable before sprays were available. Previously, if something didn't do well in a given area despite extra manuring and water, it was simply tossed in favor of something that did. Even old botanical drawings and paintings included evidence of "foliage issues". Now, when a plant struggles, we expect to find a medicine to nurse it along and keep everything perfect.

I'd rather grow things that don't require chemical intervention, and live with any imperfection that follows. You're all free to do as you wish. But if you say that growing something without spraying is impossible, that makes me question of how people did it before sprays became available.

I try to learn bits about small-scale backyard "farming", since it's a part of my eventual plan after I leave here. What I've come to find is that those who follow a chemical path end up in a cycle of relying upon chemical intervention not only to battle their initial woes but also to deal with the unintended side effects of dead soil. Many moons ago, first-time-around at school was at an agricultural college. While most of that was animal-related, I did often wonder how in the world people grew food before all of these "necessary elements" were invented. As it turns out, these "necessary elements" were needed to compensate for fewer people raising food than a few generations back, and even if their net benefits were small per unit of production, they became huge when multiplied out. For instance, your average small dairy farmer may be appalled at the idea of incorporating newspaper and cardboard into their silage, but for a mega-producer, that little bit of savings per gallon of milk adds up.

But in the end, we're not rose-farmers. We're backyard gardeners.. Since I don't exhibit, I don't need perfection -- just something nice to enjoy in the yard. Fungicides and insecticides are just too much trouble for too little gain, in my circumstances.

:-)

~Christopher

Chris, You were at an agricultural college?! What are you studing now? Can't be too far from first-time-around? :-) Something about farming?? You might be able to help me on the grape issue. If I cut all the grape vines down to the group in the fall, would them be free of black rot next year? So far I have learned this fungus is in the vine-in their blood, I need to spray all the vines in the early spring. I am not a farmer, I love Italian gardens, grape vine is a must have in an Italian garden.

Money can be made.

Very good point made by Chris in that if one is making a living by growing roses and selling roses, hybridizing roses , or showing roses or using rose plants to beautify their place of business or acting as a professional landscaping the law makes room for commercial use of fungicides. Careful attention must be take and caution used to not expose innocent lives. The chemicals are there to use in an outbreak when the benefit outweighs the risk.

If the soil is affected a cycle forms to rely on the chemical and turn the soil to dirt.

How many years is acceptable to spray endocrine hormone disruptors that affect development in humans?

To be a used in a back yard. Then risk becomes greater then the benefit.

I try to buy and eat organic as much as possible. I know that sounds counter to the fact that I spray my roses. But think about it. I don't eat my roses, I eat food. If anyone is worried about chemicals in the garden, I urge you to try organic fruits and veggies. And at the very least, wash your fruits and veggies will before eating. I can protect myself against chemicals when I spray. But if they are hidden in the food, it's harder.

I have tried to grow veggies, and it's very difficult to do without some kind of chemical assistance. I guess if I had all my time to spend on it, it would work, but I've given up on it for now. Especially since I can't have any nightshades and that is mostly what were growing. I can't even touch tomato leaves anymore.

I don't make living by growing roses, but I grow them for their beautiful blooms, they're my landscaping. I don't eat my roses. Without chemical treatment for rose midge, I won't have any blooms. It was my choice to treatment them to have blooms.. I am glad I did, my garden is filled with thousands of blooms. Fruits are different, I am doing my research on how to treat black rot on grapes. I might visit a wineyard to find it out.

Beautifully put, Chris. And Buford_NE_GA, I too try to consume plants and animals raised with as little "chemical" treatment as possible. I have an autoimmune disorder and spent time in South Africa in the early 2000s. I felt b so much better there that I began to seriously look at what was different. One big factor was food. Where I was, most of the meat & veg was produced locally by smaller operations who didn't use much "chemical" treatments. When I came back to the States, I switched to as much organic and locally small farmer produced food as I could afford.

I make rosewater out of my Cynthia's petals for cosmetic use, bury my face in my roses' delicious blooms, and am always touching my plants without gloves. Spraying my roses would make these activities not work for me.

This is such a highly personal choice; my father sprayed everything all the time and grew enormous roses which never defoliated nor had holes chewed on their leaves and buds. That was his choice and he seldom cut flowers; they were for enjoyment on the plant. I want to be safely up close and personal with my roses and not worry about what might get on my dog's coat or wind up effecting the freshwater shrimp a few miles away.

I'm not that familiar with black-rot in grapes, but I do remember a little bit of info. First, make sure the vines are planted where they get full sun and good air circulation. Second, remove any diseased fruit or growth at the end of the season, since the spores mostly overwinter within that tissue and are released in Spring. Third, before the vines leaf out in Spring, apply a thick layer of mulch to smother any spores which remain at the soil surface. The vines are most susceptible the first month of leafing out in Spring, so if you're going to use fungicides, that's the time to use them. The old Bordeaux mix can work as well. Generally, when the leaves have reached full size, they're mostly resistant to infection, but this will vary with the cultivars and species -- native American grapes being most resistant. I don't know how you have your vines growing, but it would also be a good idea to keep them thinned. Traditional vineyards have them growing like espaliers along a wire fence (rather than against a wall), training a leader up and fanning out laterals along three or four lengths of horizontal wire. This practice allows for lots of air circulation and ease of harvesting. It's better to have fewer leaves and vines than to have a tangle shading each other out.

First time around was Animal Science (not completed), and I took a few crop classes for "fun". Second time around is Psychology.

:-)

~Christopher

Christopher, best to you in career change! I have MA in clinical psych; did therapist gig for first career. Your science background will be quite helpful when you do stats and psychopharmacology and the brain anatomy.

Mary, I hope your husband makes a speedy recovery. It can't be easy.

Fellow forum posters, thanks for not turning this into a contentious battle. Years ago when I began posting on this, a civil conversation like this would have been unheard of. Posters tip-toed around the topic.

I spray because I have to. Without spraying almost everything would die in my tropical climate and those few that survived would be twigs 364 days out of the year. I know this to be true because I gave up on spraying three years ago and lost all but a dozen roses out of a collection of 300+ rose bushes (I achieved this thanks in large part to MerryGro Roses going defunct and selling me roses at next to nothing).

With that said, I do try to limit the collateral damage by keeping more bug friendly plants in non-spray areas of my yard. On any given day you will find bees and butterflies in my yard and most ignore my roses. I also spray with an emphasis on damage control in the products I choose. My go-to is Manzate/Dithane, Banner Maxx, and Conserve SC. In times of outbreaks I do use the Bayer product and the Ortho product, but I don't do this year round. My roses are thriving and this is in large part due to spraying. This idea is not for everyone and if you prefer less Hybrid Tea perfect form and like Austin style blooms than you can definitely purchase roses that will require less spraying in my climate and perhaps none in yours.

Good luck and thank you to all, once again, for keeping things civil.

-Adrian

Adrian, have you thought about perhaps trying some of the older roses that do well in warm climates, like Chinas, Teas, Noisettes, etc? There are also some roses bred by Girija and Viru Viraraghavan in India, with the aim of doing well in tropical climates. Some of his roses are available in the US, notably through Roses Unlimited and Rose Petals Nursery.

:-)

~Christopher

Chris, Wow, that was a huge change in your life from Animal Science, crop classes to Psychology. :-) Good for you! Always want to take some crop, and metal art classes. metal art goes with garden design....... thanks for the info on the grape rot. I got some help on the fruit forum, and I found out sulfur can be used to treat black rot. I use sulfur mix with dish soap for BS and PM when the weather is cool, didn't know that could be used on grapes too. I grow grapes on gazebos (roofs), I have to re-think about this garden design, they'd need more air flow. Thinking about to let rambler roses( Ghislaine de Feligonde and Malvern Hills) cover the big gazebo roof (15-16' tall), and keep the grapes up to 8'......