Comparing Gertrude Jekyll and Zephirine Drouhin climbing roses?
Liz Bell
last year
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jjpeace (zone 5b Canada)
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Gertrude Jekyll, Winchester Cathedral, and Tess of the D'urbervil
Comments (9)Mike, we don't get ANY fall bloom. Oh, that would be nice. The rose season begins here with Rosa xanthina. Then, Harison's Yellow and Therese Bugnet. After that, the main rose flush, albas, centifolias and damask. The War of the Roses seems to occur about the Fourth of July. In July, Dr. Van Fleet and American Pillar bloom a little on whatever growth made it through the winter. Zephirine Drouhin starts to bloom then, too, and was going to bloom in September, but the buds froze. Quatre Saison loses its canes down to a foot but re-grows quickly and blooms all summer. This got me thinking that maybe I could find some repeat bloomers that would re-grow and bloom on new wood, extending the rose season out to the end of the summer. So far, red roses are not in the future, it seems like. Gruss an Teplitz and Alfred Colomb are toast this spring, but alive, I think. My science experiments with Bourbons and hybrid perpetuals are mixed. They seem to need balmy ocean breezes or shade. I need to get around to doing some winter protection. Lavender Lass, all of my albas are doing well. Chloris, Alba maxima, Alba semi-plena, and Konigen von Danemark all get about five feet here. Madame Plantier is about as tall but wide. It throws out long, loopy canes that dangle on the ground. It should have been planted in an obelisk or something....See MoreGood bye Zephirine Drouhin
Comments (15)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...See MoreClimbing Gertrude Jekyll + Question About Fragrance
Comments (10)I have been to the David Austin Headquarters in Tyler Texas and had the opportunity to tour the facility, including the area where they store the rose plants in large bins. I was told that there is NO DIFFERENCE between the Climbing Gertrude Jeckyll and the normal one. The same is true for ALL the other ones that claim to have a climbing version and a bush version. I don't know why they do this-it just confuses the public. We grow GJ in our garden and it will get quite tall here, even though we may take 4 feet of cane away when we deadhead. We can smell the most fragrant roses more than 10-12 feet away. We have a very large specimen of the noisette Jaune Deprez with hundreds of roses open at the same time, and the fragrance is detectable around 12 feet away or so....See More'Zephirine Drouhin'
Comments (14)Thanks for sharing such a beautiful lovely ZD! She clearly loves your climate. I really wanted to grow her, fragrant, thornless climber that can handle shade, what’s not to love. But once I read about how badly she mildews in California and seeing the specimen at Huntington Garden near my house in such a bad state I decided against it. But I realized there was another thornless pink climber, Climbing Pinkie, and so I got her last fall from ARE. Here she is just putting out her first cane that you can barely see in the shadows. The backs of her leaves have prickles, but otherwise so far completely thornless and a light fragrance, although ZD should be much more fragrant. For anyone in California she has spotless glossy foliage. I have her planted so she can eventually climb along the cable fence between our yard and the neighbors and we will be walking closely by to get down our respective narrow 5 ft wide side yards, houses are 10ft apart here, so I hope she stays thornless....See MoreLiz Bell
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