I was told the same John at the nursery where I picked up my GJ. I think it might be a marketing thing to charge more money for a "climbing" DA. Tho this is the first year I've had GJ and so far just one bloom.. but I cant detect a fragrance from a distance yet.

I thought the climbing and the regular GJ were the same price. That's a bit weird why they do that.

I am in zone 6a, GJ didn't climb here, I had 3 of them, lost all during the cold winter a couple years ago. They were about 4' tall.

You lost them all? I thought they were supposed to be Zone 4 hardy :(

I lost about 6-7 DAs that year, I was being lazy didn't buy a trailer mulch. I planted roses around trees, tree roots were everywhere, so I only dug half a hole to plant a rose, then put mulch on top to cover the grafted part before the winter, after a year some grafted parts would show up again after mulch sinking a little, I'd need to put on more mulch for their winter protection. I failed to do that one year, I learned my lesson the hard way.......you can see from these before and after photos. It's not right to plant a rose this way, but I had no other way in the land of tree roots.....

Before:

After:

T

My question isn't about fragrance, rather size. Can anyone tell me how tall to expect Gertrude Jekyll to get in zone 5? I thought, perhaps, in colder zones, she may not want to climb.

I asked David Marriott, David Austen's man about town/roses, that question at a meeting at Ashdown roses. His response was that they pruned them differently for sale, and the "climbers" were pruned to be taller.

In my gardens, Gertrudes (four of them) have never gotten more than four feet tall, but my winters are cold and GJ often wants to come out of winter too fast and gets late winter damage from cankers.

Most of my fragrant roses don't waft when the humidity is low. In early Spring when humidity is high after rain and big Spring flush is happening I can smell New Zealand about 2 meters away. Some roses waft more than others. My JG is very fragrant up close but it does not waft. Felicia wafts a bit, so does Marie Pavie. But none of my roses waft the same way as say hedychium or murraya or gardenia or orchids or lilies or freesias.

Thank you, stillanntn. I realize height was a bit off topic, but I couldn't find anything closer. How wonderful that you were able to ask questions of David Marriott, himself! What an opportunity. Encouraging to know your GJs have behaved themselves and stayed at the size stated on their tags. However, I suppose one of the more entertaining aspects of growing roses, is that we never really know exactly what to expect when we put those little plants in the ground.