Beautiful photos, Rick. I agree with your comments about Claire Roses wanting to get big even when young. I bought a 1 gallon pot of this variety with 3 rooted cuttings, 2 houses ago in the 1990's. I separated the cuttings and planted them around 6 ft apart as an equilateral triangle. By late fall each plant had 2 or 3 canes that were 6-8 ft tall. in the next spring, there was a spray of a few blossoms at the end of each cane of each plant. I had read about 'pegging' and 'self pegging', so decided to try these techniques on Claire Rose and a trio of specimens of 'The Pilgrim'. Canes of 'Claire Rose' were far to stiff to consider 'self-pegging' (but worked beautifully with 'The Pilgrim'. By summer of that year there were around 4-7 canes each on each of the 'Claire Rose' plants that were 7 to 10 feet talI, and I used used landscape staples to 'peg' each of the canes for each of the 3 Claire Rose plants. The axillary buds (perhaps 15 to 25 on each cane) all produced a flowering shoot that was around 8 inches or so, bearing around 5 to 7 flowers each! So rather than a single flower cluster at the ends of 6 canes (5 flowers per cluster x 6 canes = 30 flowers per flush per plant), you can get flowers clusters on each flowering shoot of each of the 6 canes (5 flowers per cluster x 6 canes x 20 flower clusters per cane = 600 flowers per cluster)!!! The petals on this rose do not fall off the flowers of this, so the flowers last a long time on the plant; eventually (1.5 to 2 weeks?), the petals finally turn brown and are unsightly. When this happens, you can trim each flowering shoot to 1 or 2 nodes, and you will have another crop of flowers in around 6 weeks or so in my area. And so far a rather modest amount of work (pegging), you can increase flower production by a factor of 20 or so: definitely worth the extra effort if you have room.

The canes of 'The Pilgrim' are quite long (8-12 feet) flexible, so for this one, rather than just pegging the canes to the ground, you can take each cane and form a vertically aligned loop by taking each cane and bending it straight down and tying it to the crown of the plant. Through this process, you will increase the number of flowers per flush by a factor of 20 to 30.

I have 3 specimens of 'Claire Rose' in my garden now but can't peg them because of lack of adequate space. When pegged, this rose needs a circular area of 10 to 12 feet diameter, and I don't have this much space presently in this part of my garden. I can manage these 3 as 5 to 6 ft, tall shrubs by pruning heavily between flushes. I do have 1 grafted (Rosa multiflora) and 2 own-root specimens of CR. In my area, CR does fine on its own roots.

Rick, I have sent you at least 4 emails since February and not received a response. Do you have a new email address? I can send them again if you somehow missed them. I have been asked by Jill Perry at the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, to root around 30 early Austin roses, to replace those specimens lost in their garden. I now have plants for 24 of these, which I have growing in 1 gallon pots. I have extra plants of many of these, including 'Prospero' (which is one of the few that benefits from a rootstock) and 'Jayne Austin', which does fine here on its own roots. Let me know if you'd like to see a list of my extra plants for use either in your personal garden or for the Summerland Ornamental Gardens.