I don't know where you are in Zone 7, so I'll answer based on my location. Zephirine Drouhin is VERY prone to defoliation from blackspot here. (The first time I saw it in person was in a no-spray display garden in August years ago -- it was leafless.) This is the reason I waited till just last year to add her to my own garden ... I didn't know whether I could handle it or not. Bayer fungicide, applied every two weeks or so, has kept the blackspot to a level that I can accept. I have ZD paired on an arch with her 'sister' Kathleen Harrop. If you're in the East, your mildew may be more a function of weather than plant maturity. This year, with it's unusually cooler and wetter weather so far this summer (until Monday, that is), has been great for mildew. Connie

I've been told ZD just isn't a California girl. Unfortunately, I got that advice AFTER I planted mine. It's the only plant with powdery mildew in my garden right now. Not a lot - and it has some scattered blooms now too - but enough to remind me that this isn't its favorite place. Some springs it manages to develop PM, rust and a scattering of blackspot all at once. So, it's not only you who can't get it to be healthy. Why do I still have it? I'm lazy about removing big roses, and it still produces a nice, occasionally spectacular, display every spring (if you don't demand perfect foliage). I wouldn't put Mme Caroline Testout (CL) in any place that I had to walk through or train those incredibly thorny canes. We grow it in the cemetery as a big arching bush, and still hate getting near it for its infrequent pruning. We don't get a lot of repeat on it, either. What about training a pillar rose? I know that not everybody will agree, but Mme Isaac Perrier stays quite healthy in the Sacramento cemetery and reblooms well, too - and is incredibly fragrant. I have a friend who is growing it on a trellis on his house, and it produces ten foot canes when trained up. He also has Gertrude Jekyll on a trellis, another lanky large plant with deep pink, fragrant flwers that I think does better either whacked hard or pillared/trellised. If you have room, you could put another small shrubby repeat blooming rose at the base, the way that Paul Zimmerman recommends on his video. Pillared and climbing roses often are bare on the bottom third or half of an arbor. Many climbers are really too big for the usual garden arbor. I have 8' tall ones with a five foot opening, and three foot sides. They were considered the "big arbors" when I bought them but are overwhelmed by most climbing roses. That's another reason to consider a pillar rose. Anita

Hi nik, I was thinking of Mrs B R Cant which is a tea. She gets big and has nice medium pink double flowers and is not a climber but she would still work. I may get her for another spot. Jasmina does look beautiful I like the full shape of her flowers. I will have to research on if she would do well here. I found these photos of Jasmina paired with Laguna...WOW!! http://www.mein-schoener-garten.de/experten/blog/rosen_und_mehr/2012/07/07/laguna-und-jasmina-kletterrosen Teas are new to me and I got a bunch of them this year :) I hope they work out for me here. We are hot and humid but drier in the late fall winter and early spring (unless it is a wet year like the last couple lol). We have a rainy season in the summer where it can rain almost every day at least a little, just enough to steam it up and make it miserable. ~sjn

By "substantial" I mean thickness -- and those laterals are substantial enough to be considered future canes. And something to keep in mind is that if you train substantial laterals as though they were canes, and they sprout their own laterals, you'll find that the rose will not be producing as many new canes. This is because, as I hypothesize, the root system can support only so many actively-growing buds. When you prune all the laterals down to a few bud eyes, you're removing actively-growing buds -- and this sends a signal to the roots to activate buds lower down which will become new canes or basal breaks. If you instead allow the laterals to grow, then train them as if they're main canes, they'll sprout laterals of their own. This means more actively-growing buds, which tells the root system "we're good up here -- no new canes needed." Which way works for you depends on the rose -- some can flower for years on the same canes, while others' canes will be exhausted after a year or two. You'll know as you go. If the cane looks somewhat "deflated", and new growth is thin and spindly, the cane is probably exhausted and should be cut back hard. If your rose is own-root, you can remove it entirely, and a new cane can come from the roots. If your rose is on rootstock, you'll want to cut it almost all the way off, leaving a few inches of it remaining. If you look closely, you'll see the "sleeping" bud eyes -- there's usually a sort of red freckle in the middle of a thin line going around the cane. If you cut back to one of these, it'll wake up, and a new strong cane should spring forth. If you can't see them, just leave four or five inches of cane and wait to see where a new bud starts growing, then cut back to just before that. I'm not personally familiar with the rose you pictured, but based on what I see, I'd leave those laterals and let them grow. When they start to harden -- but before they're totally stiff -- I'd start guiding them to go in the opposite direction from the main cane against the wall. In your pictures, that means to the left. If and when the rest of that main cane going to the right becomes exhausted, you can cut it back to the first strong lateral, and let that lateral function as the main cane. It's all something you'll learn as you go and become familiar with your roses. You'll get a sense of when a cane is exhausted, and you'll just cut back to the first "not exhausted" growth emanating from it. Remember that more laterals will form the closer to horizontal a cane is trained, and let that guide you. If a strong lateral is growing too long for where you want it to go, just prune it back to a set of leaflets with a bud eye facing the direction where you want new growth to go. :-) ~Christopher