Looks wonderful!

Beautiful, like all your blooms! Hope you keep showing us you'd lovely roses!

Fabulous! Lucky you! Seems like a great way to grow her.

Very smart! Lovely rose,too!!!!

Looks great, how tall is the tomato cage?

Just beautiful!!!

Oh wow!!! That gives me hope for Strawberry Hill. It was a new bare root this year, and the canes were so thin and flexible that I did what you did!!! If mine looks anywhere as nice as yours does, I'll be one happy woman!!!

I'm going to do that with my Evelyn too. You are an inspiration!!!!

Carol

Thanks everyone, I was pleasantly surprised how well Evelyn responded to training as a climber. I cannot take credit for the idea though. I think I got the idea from Cynthia if I remember correctly. The cage is about 1 meter tall.

I would like to try this on my still young Evelyn. Right now it is growing as a bush and it is not looking very shapely. Thank you for sharing.

You most certainly do get credit for the idea if you can execute it so absolutely perfectly! What an amazing display of Evelyn around such a modest support. My Crown Princess Margaretha is wound around a tomato-cage type support but it so rarely blooms (given winter kill to the ground) that I don't get the profusion of gorgeous blooms as you do! Carol - that's just a heads-up for our cold zones, that we can get the rose to grow this way but if all the canes are new growth in a year they often don't bloom very profusely, particularly in a rose like Strawberry Hill that is more or less bred as a climber. How your Strawberry Hill performs will depend a lot on if you have surviving cane after the winter. Still, a lot of my Austin climbers and roses come back reasonably well from the ground, just not this profusely.

Just gorgeous and a wonderful counterpart to the brick walkway surrounding it, FN! Thanks for sharing this photo and encouraging us to try this simple idea by demonstrating the success. Don't you love simple (not to mention cheap) rose options?

Cynthia

A tomato cage - cannot think of a better way to use one. The end result is breathtaking!

It grew 14-ft canes here. It would have required a halacious big tomato cage.

Cynthia - All of the growth stays. There's no winter kill, since I grow my roses in pots and overwinter them in the garage. So I should have enough length. :)

Carol

For those who want to try this I think the primary basal canes are probably too hard and thick to be wounded around a cage. I have used the long laterals off the basal canes on the cage. You do need a little patience as the canes can snap if you try to do it too quickly. A little massage of the canes can help in tight corners. Mind you I left 2 snapped canes on the cage and they still managed to bloom anyway.

More blooms!

Amazing!!! That's what I want!!! Stunning!

Carol

Karen, I know exactly which picture you're referring to of the Evelyn trained on a fence. That was the picture that inspired me to try to train Evelyn as a climber. But my Evelyn was in the middle of the garden and not next to a wall so I was scratching my head thinking how I could possibly train it as a climber. Luckily Cynthia happened to be talking about her CPM trained around a cage so I decided to buy the tomato cage and give it a go. We learn so many things from this forum it's wonderful!

FragranceN, I've been meaning to compliment you on your gorgeous Evelyn, one of my all time favorite roses. I would love to try your technique on the cage, but I'm afraid I would end up snapping all Evelyn's brittle (even new ones) canes. I have a new four month old Evelyn that is getting big. My other Evelyns are 11 years old, and I wouldn't dare try wrapping their canes on anything. They would riot and impale me! My baby Evelyn has well balanced canes approaching five feet already, and they seem pretty large and stiff. I just can't see how they could be wrapped on anything. Is patience the main thing to have, or is there any other trick to this technique? I assume you remove all the leaves and blooms so the canes are bare. Or would it be better to wrap the canes when the rose is dormant and has naturally lost its leaves?

Anyway, she's a beauty, fragranceN. I'd love to see photos of her progress as time goes on. Diane

Hi Diane,

The basal canes are thick and stiff so I wouldn't be able to train them either, but if you leave the laterals long they can be pliable enough for training. The thinner canes are actually easier to train. I waited until winter and I pulled off all the leaves and trained the bare canes. Training is too hard with the leaves on. The baby Evelyn may be worth a try but I agree you can probably forget about training an 11 yo bush.

Good Luck!

Thanks for your patience with me, fragrance. I'm starting to "get it", I think. So do you cut the basal canes short to get them out of the way as you train the laterals? Do you think the cage will be large enough as the bush grows? As you know, Evelyn gets pretty large. Love those last photos of your Evelyn. What a gorgeous rose. Diane

Hi Diane, I do trim all basal canes short regardless as I don't want a very tall bush and as you know this rose is very vigorous. The basals all produced about 4 to 7 flowering canes each. Later in the season I will allow the laterals to grow long so that I can repeat the process again next winter. I plan to cut out the old trained canes each year and put fresh canes on the cage so that the plant will stay fresh and vigorous. I am pretty ruthless with my winter pruning to control overall plant size as I have limited space and I don't want any particular plant to take over everything else. So I think the cage should be ok for a few years.

Thanks so much for these details. I think there are a few roses of mine that I should be tougher on with the pruners because of limited space. As far as Evelyn is concerned, I'm going to think on your method for a while. What you're doing seems very daring to me (but successful), and you certainly have a way with shaping the canes to produce beautiful displays. Keep those gorgeous photos coming, and thanks again. Diane

Fragrancenutter, that is just beautiful. What size container is she in? Or is she in the ground? Thanks Lisa

Hi Lisa, she is in the ground, 12 months old.

Only 12 months old and all those flowers? You indeed have the special touch:)