Like other roses with long canes grows as an arching mound where support is not available.

Around here people often plant lady banks and shear them into shrubs three times a summer. They are hideous (gumdrops with six foot shoots sticking out of them by the time they are sheared again). They hardly bloom.

If they're sheared at the wrong time, and/or you attempt to keep them too small, they won't flower well. Left as LARGE mounds, sheared after they flower and only the long whips removed from then on until they flower the next year, they pave themselves all over their surfaces here with bloom. Not what I want to do with them, but it can be done. As I've written of before, Banksiae can also be used as a wall cover, treated the same way and it will pave itself with bloom all over its surface with flowers.

Thank you! I was wondering if I could keep it small as noseometer described but that seems like it would not at all be worth it. It's such a big plant that I have to do some thinking about where I can but one but I think I'll probably get some cuttings going soon so they can be outside in the spring. Maybe I was being a little over dramatic that I have nowhere for a climbing rose...I do have a sunny spot on the outside of our enclosed chicken coup that might work!

I haven't seen it successfully kept any smaller, AND have any quantity of bloom, than at least seven feet in all directions. The major "pruning" is done after it flowers, not before, or you cut off the majority of the flowering wood before it flowers. Once it begins pushing new growth all over the plant, you only remove the really long, climbing shoots so it's kept about the size it is. The more you remove, the less color you'll have on it next year. It CAN be done, but it is labor intensive and it requires a lot of room for such a large plant mass. Perhaps growing it up and over the chicken coop might be possible? But, get ready for insect and rodent invasion... You might benefit from growing Purezza instead. It is a hybrid Banksiae and it can flower repeatedly once it's established and the spot is warm enough.

Lady Banks is a once-a-year bloomer and blooms on new growth. If it's sheared on a regular basis or hard-pruned in spring before the bloom sets, there will be no blooms until the following spring. Proper pruning time for Lady Banks in the low desert is late spring following the annual bloom cycle. It can be pruned to shape in summer and fall.