My goodness, Sherry, I'm having trouble understanding your dissatisfaction with the rose for that location, especially from a blooming perspective. You've had it in the ground for three years and had it so healthy and reblooming for all that time that you've had to cut back some of its long healthy canes? Antique Rose Emporium describes the length of their canes as winding around a 14' pole they pictured, so that part probably didn't come as a surprise. The blooms look wonderful to me, and that's true also past the first ultra-full flush. No rose has two first flushes, unless maybe it's a hybrid musk with an ultra heavy fall flush. But the Red Cascade rose is almost as beautiful in July as it was in May, and few roses happen to be nearly so floriferous as this one when other roses aren't doing much in the heat. This rose looks about as good as it can get for a southern garden to me. In your April picture so full of the red rosy blooms of Red Cascade, notice that most of your other roses really aren't doing much, especially compared to Red Cascade. But in July of last year and this year too, it's holding its own in comparison with many of your other roses. Some roses likely have the beginnings of all the blooms they are going to produce eventually during the season already incipiently present at the start of blooming each year, and their reblooming merely projects those blooms that take much longer to come on than when the first flush appears. I have a feeling from looking closely at your pictures (which show many darkened earlier blooms) that this rose might be of that type, especially considering its parentage. But it hardly matters, since apparently it does contain so very many blooms waiting around to get started at some point during the season. I certainly wouldn't criticize a decision to switch to some other kind of finely feathered evergreen shrub, but all the little red dots of Red Cascade's striking color on beautiful feathery foliage look spectacular to me. I take back all the previous suggestions I posted last night, as I don't see that you could likely improve things any by doing something different. Perhaps your mistake, if you made one, was in choosing a rose you really don't like as much as you thought you would when ordering it. Maybe really tiny flowers aren't noticeable enough to count for much blooming to you? If that's it, then just ignore all the oo-la-lah's I've been thinking in looking at your beautiful rose pictures, Sherry. Just replace those little miniature rose plants if you really prefer larger blooms! Best wishes, Mary

Sherry, I am doing just that, but with some other rose combinations... I do, however, have Red Cascade intermingling with Alister Stella Grey AND a blue AND a white clematis...Overkill? FWIW... you really won't know what's going to happen in your own microclimate until you try it yourself. Now...from a different standpoint. I will say that I don't always like different "reds" together. I don't know if I would like or hate RC and DJ...sometimes different reds together are unappealing to me..put some of the flowers together and see what you think. I'm using some Barbier hybrid wichuranas to provide leaves for my otherwise naked roses: Sombreuil, Parade, Secret Garden Musk Climber, etc. I think it looks cool. Robert

I have it. In fact, I spent the better part of an hour hacking at--ah...pruning my three plants this morning. Mine is planted on a white vinyl fence. RC will not climb on its own, just like other roses, but RC seems to want to be a low spreading ground cover. You have to make it climb. I don't know that it would shrub up or be a bush at all if left alone. We have trained canes to the fences by tying them. In late winter, I prune hard to keep it in bounds. By fall, the rose is taking over all the bed and I prune again. RC doesn't mind pruning. In fact, when first planted in our new yard, my boys kept mowing over it. LOL Yet, it survived. Someone here on GW said they think RC LIKES to be mowed. LOL The blooms are dime sized and many, but there is only the slightest fragrance. Extremely hardy, drought tolerant, and disease resistant. It may get a few yellowed leaves from BS, but never slows down. It is not my favorite because we have to prune and tie more than I'd like. On the other hand, we sure don't have to baby it any either. Here is a view of my three in full bloom. You can see the fence I want it to grow on and you can see where lots of the blooms are... In the spring I always remember why I grow this rose. Here is a link that might be useful: Creative Soul

I tried red cascade as a border once...it didn't work. I planted six of them side by side, in hope they would cascade over the timber wall that was 3 ft high. while they didn't get very tall they did get very long. Most of the canes were over six feet long. It was hard to maintain all of the canes as they wanted to fill everywhere in the garden. These would make excellent small climbers though. Tammy