Since you don't know exactly what climber you have there, it is hard to say how it will respond to your loving care - it may be a variety that is not cane hardy in zone 5 and so is struggling to be its best. OTOH, it may just need some TLC and you can help it succeed. Kate is right. Just prune out any dead or winter damaged canes - but not too early in spring. Wait until the forsythia blooms in your area; that's usually a good marker for when to get going on your rose pruning. Keep it watered and give it some fertilizer and or compost and see how it does this year. Good luck! BTW, if you're in Marshall, you really ought to plan an outing one day this June and head east on 94 to Belleville to see the Great Lakes Roses display gardens when they're in full bloom. GLR nursery is closing at the end of this season (the Lindsey's are retiring,) but they are still offering wonderful large potted roses for sale this year. Even if you don't go there to purchase, you can see some very mature and beautiful hardy shrubs and climbers all in one spot and they can answer questions on roses with great expertise. I heartily recommend that you make the effort to get there sometime before they close this coming fall! :-) Anne

Thank you all for such thought-provoking comments. They are really helping me work through this undertaking! Sandy, all of your info is appreciated, and I especially liked your comments, "Your land will actually speak to you" and "The right plant will present itself to you when you're at a nursery sometime." I know these are true, and I need to not be in such a hurry! Your spacing and color info is very helpful, but I have a couple more questions (for greenhaven, also). I've seen lots of pictures of perennials mixed in with roses, or a clematis twining through a rose bush. Doesn't this make it harder to care for and prune the roses, and doesn't it limit the air circulation? I have 3 Carefree Wonders that look gorgeous by themselves. Can I plant them closer together since they are the same rose? I have 3 Quietness (very lovely pale pink) and 3 Winnipeg Parks (a pretty red that looks beautiful with the Quietness). I have other contrasting and/or blending of 3 or 4 single bushes that look good together IMO. Is it possible to have multiple focal point groups, separated by low evergreens or green perennials in the space I have and have it look good? I really like informal gardens more than formal, especially with our setting. I've seen lots of pictures of parts of gardens with roses, or formal rose gardens, but I've not seen any plans showing predominantly rose gardens, interplanted with other perennials. Any ideas where I could look at such plans for roses? greenhaven, DH nixed the manure, so I'll put peat in the planting hole in the 12" of top soil. Thanks for the specific info! sunnyrose, thanks for the heads up on the Roundup. I'll check into it further. alisande, thanks for the pic of the large spruce. This, with greenhavens warning, motivates me to go back out and more carefully look where the sun will fall when our spruce is mature. We got our estimate for building a wall today, so we've decided to bite the bullet and do it. One more thing, any opinions on whether I should have structures for my climbing roses mentioned earlier? Or do you think I'll be ok trying them as very large shrubs in the more open background? Anne

It partly depends on how much work you want to indulge in. The easiest thing to do is use RoseTone--it has some of the separate ingredients you listed and thus will save you time and effort. Nothing else is necessarily needed, but I do add at least one feeding in the spring of alfalfa pellets and manure, but that is optional. I second and third the advice not to feed your new roses until after they have substantial new growth--maybe wait even until after the first bloom. They will be busy growing roots down there underground during the waiting time--that's good! Kate

Thanks, guys! Glad you two didn't catch the brunt of this one...boy was it fast and furious! We had ultra-high rotation winds all along the front of this storm; sustained 60 mph, with frequent gusts to 90 mph. The grace of God kept them from dropping actual tornadoes. Lightning strikes were 100 per minute, if you can imagine that. I was also pretty lucky when I unburied my Oklahoma; the damage was much less than I thought, and when I took back the broken canes the bush still looked pretty good. The only other bush that was truly affected by the storm was my Lilac Rose, and just the bloms were affected. NO BROKEN CANES!! If you could see pics of my front yard you would know how truly amazing that is. I'll get some pics up sometime this evening. Had hubby not had to go in to work that night his car would have been toast because of two massive limbs that fell right on his parking space. A very, very large limb broke and blew toward the house...stopping short of our front door by a foot and falling exactly BETWEEN my original, 70 year old iron railings!!!