sd welcome to the forum. I am sorry if somehow I am missing seeing your zone, but In order to help you we need a bit more of info. A rose that is 12 feet in zone 8 could well be 2 feet tall in zone 5. Where are you located? US gardening zone and relative state area. When you say less than ideal light do you mean 5 hours or 3? A rose could do well in California with 3-4 hours of morning sun and be terrible somewhere leas hot. Looking forward to helping you out. There are many members here gardening all over the country and Austins are very popular so I am sure there will be someone here who can provide you with a good answer.

Yes that would be helpful! I’m in 8b- the PNW. I thought it was included with my name so I’ll check that setting.

Thank you sd, I can see it now around your name. This site sometimes does weird things like that. We have several members closer to your area that I hope will chime in and give you their opinions. I am in the humid south. In your relatively mild zone I think James Galway will definitely grow big enough to cover the area you need. I planted one this spring with only morning sun and it is already 2 feet tall (Grafted) from David Austin. I have not sprayed it and it is completely clean of any fungal disease so far which probably means it is very healthy for an Austin. Here any Austin that can get 4 hours of sun does well with blooming so hopefully your plant will at least get that much sun.

Sorry I couldn’t edit my post. If the rose starts growing taller than your fence all you need to do is bend the canes horizontally which will make it give you even more blooms. This should help you accommodate a rose on the 12 feet range or so.

Thank you- that is really helpful.

I'm been trying to think about how much sun that area gets and I think this climber will get anywhere from 3-6 hours of afternoon sun depending where on the fence I place it. I'll try to be more observant this summer so I can figure out the optimum spot. I'm hoping I can cover the part of the fence the window looks out onto, but it's the shadier spot so we'll see how that goes. I'd even be happy if that part of the rose had primarily leaves (with more flowers towards the sunnier side). Leaves would be an improvement over the wood fence.

Those are beautiful! I did go down a clematis rabbit hole a couple of days ago when I realized I might be expecting too much for a rose bush in that area.

But I think that they grow entirely too large for my purposes here in the PNW. I just have a 6.5 ft by 6 ft fence I need to cover. My house runs perpendicular to two other houses so it's at the intersection of two fences from both houses and I don't want anything that I can't keep pruned down to my side of the fence. All the shade tolerant clematis I read about seem to grow monstrously large. I'd love to hear if anyone thinks differently though.

For now my plan might be to shift the climbing rose bush a foot or two down in the other direction where it's sunnier. I won't be able to see it from my window but visitors to our house will see it. And then to cover the part of the fence I can see through the window with the evergreen star jasmine. I'm not sure how many flowers I would get due to the partial shade conditions, but it seems like it's easier to keep pruned down. I'm going to have the same star jasmine vine in another part of my yard that does get more sunlight so it could be an interesting experiment.

I'm still thinking this through though. And I have time since I don't plan on planting this area until next February/March.

Sounds like you have a good plan. Since you have time keep an eye on the sun and if you get anything like 4 hours of sun in the area you can see go for it. Roses are tougher than they look and you naught be surprised with beautiful blooms you can enjoy from your window. Good luck! Hope to see your results in the future.