Gorgeous pictures, Jackie. In your garden the "unfettered" look seems just right, and I've decided it's because you have a large and very tall house which has a strong enough presence to be enhanced by the vigorous roses. It's all a matter of scale, and a one-story ranch would soon disappear among the roses.

Oh Aye - easy as a climber...but it has a tendency to do that one cane racing skywards thing so....pros and cons. Personally, I am heartily sick of dealing with the 2 measly (but long, very long) canes it consistently seems to want to fling out - and yes, obvs I have wielded secateurs like a butcher...to no avail. I thought about sticking it up a post (for about 10 seconds) but am now leaving this behind when committing the allotment to a mere holding pen for the wood transplants.

In fairness, I suspect it needs a bit more sun and warmth than it gets, snivelling behind a vast wall of blackberries...and I am amused at the huge variation in these Pemberton musks (the only one coming to Norfolk is the lovely, and vigorously shrubby Moonlight).

For some years I have grown Buff Beauty as a horizontal climber. It does that better than any rose I know. I recently loaded the new MAC OS on my computer and it completely messed up my iPhoto. I'm having an awful time finding pictures anymore, so unfortunately I can't find any of it in bloom. This one probably shows the form of the plant better anyway.

Mine is trained like Rosefolley's, as a horizontal climber, and it was not difficult to do that. It is against a 6' tall wood fence and is about 20' long, but is easily kept within about 3.5' of the fence in width.

I just remembered that I meant to discuss the behavior of my other plant of Buff Beauty (before getting called away to help hang window shades for the parakeets...). Both plants own root, by the way. The other one I was training to lean against and into a small tree (crape myrtle), which worked fine for the first 6 years or so. The rose soon grew so huge, however, that it was overwhelming the tree -- multiple big, long 15' canes that shot well past the tree and headed into the neighbor's yard and up a redwood tree. Robust, healthy, vigorous -- I don't really think of BB as always being a "small" or even particularly "mannerly" (as is often said) climber anymore, after seeing the behavior of that one (removed it for being inappropriately thuggish, though a beauty, too, like its colleague). The one in the photo above is more restrained, being in poor soil and getting meager irrigation.

Can't really comment directly about south-facing heat, as the BB in my photo is on an east-facing wall in a narrow alley and the one now gone was in a semi-shady situation, surrounded by trees. In general, though, the hot climate here in Livermore is not ideal for hybrid musks (tends to limit them to basically 2 flushes a year, one in spring and the other in fall, with no flowers in the summer), and I have planted mine in more-or-less sun-sheltered positions for that reason, as they don't seem to like the heat. They are more floriferous closer to the coast, I have noticed (Berkeley, Richmond).

Mine could easily grow a great deal bigger than it is. I prune it pretty hard every year, and also prune at deadhead time. It has one big flush and a couple of much lighter repeats.

I planted my BB as an own root in a 2.5 litre pot in May 2013. It decided that it wanted to take over the world so this spring I had a very 'rustic' frame built for it to climb on. The frame is about 2.5 metres tall and it's already reached the top - here's a photo from May this year -

It has this wonderful flush in spring and is now having a much reduced flush at the moment, however, it was resolutely without flowers all summer long - although our summer was very hot and it's in full sun all day. It gets watered twice a week for an hour on a drip irrigation system - 16 litres in total for the week - it would probably flower much better if I watered more but we have to rely on town water for the garden so I'm trying to make my roses as tough as possible ...

Cheers

Tricia

It is instructive to see the difference than heat and light make to this rose. I do agree, it makes a terrific candidate for post and wire training - mine is part of a 'fedge' (between hedge and fence) but has been overshadowed by the more ebullient Goldfinch as well as the blackberries...so it is with a tiny smidgeon of regret I never really enabled this rose to show it's full potential.