Hi Saki Glad these comments were helpful, and we're always eager to help a beginning rose grower feel confident with their roses. The photo you posted is a lovely and very mature specimen of what looks like two or maybe even 3 climbing roses all splayed out horizontally along the fence. You can see one "fan" of canes spreading out from just right of center and another fan spreading from the left 1/3 of the photo. I can't tell if the cane stretching straight up in the center is part of a third plant with a few lateral canes or not. This effect is definitely a great thing to strive for, but I'd be totally depressed if I tried to get all my climbers to look like this, since not all climbers put out as many primary canes coming straight out of the soil as this one does. I'll show you two contrasting climbers for example. Colette looks the most like the photo above with several canes coming straight out of the soil that I'm encouraging sideways on my fence. Do remember that climbing roses have to be secured in some way to the fence - they won't climb on their own like clematis or other vines will. Mine is probably 3 years old, and you can see that it has three main canes out of the soil (I usually call them primary canes in a climber, but they come out of the base and I presume the terms are the same thing). Mine is own-root so there isn't a graft from which these canes split off, but if I'd buried my graft the 2-4" that is recommended in cold zones, it would look a lot like this too. Now, the reason you distinguish between primary canes and laterals in a climber, is that your blooms aren't mostly going to be directly on those primary canes that you bend sideways. Even in a young climber like this, you can see that the blooms are in smaller off-shoot canes that branch off vertically from these horizontal main canes - we call these lateral canes. The main/primary canes are toward the bottom of the fence, but the blooming laterals stretch up a good 2-3' higher than the primary canes. The more horizontal you can stretch your canes, the more likely the rose will put out laterals all the way along the length of those primary canes. That means you can have a fence full of blooms from only a few primary canes, even if the rose puts out a limited "fan" of canes. As Colette ages, she might put out more base canes, but I doubt I'd get the rich "forest" of canes in the photo above even when she's mature - particularly in any climbers that lose cane over the winter. Still, I'm confident she'll fill this part of the fence in another 2 years or so. Here's another rose that for me grows in a somewhat different habit. I've only seen one primary cane off the base of my Lunar Mist, and it's more like 4-5 years old. I bend it sideways in the same way as I do the Colette above, and it sends up laterals all along the length. Same principles of laterals and primary canes as above, it's just that the base of the rose is at one end of the array and the blooms arch off to one side off the primary cane that I've bent sideways. You can't quite see the base of Lunar Mist here, but it's off to the right and below the picture here, below where the clematis is. My New Dawn never got mature in the poor location under my oak tree, and we'll see what the new grafted version wants to do now, but at the moment it just has one big cane that I've stretched sideways like the Lunar Mist above. Climbers are very different when young vs. when mature, though, so you have to be patient with them. It usually takes at least 4-5 years before a climber has built up enough root structure to support a robust blooming rose, and not all of them will build this kind of fan structure very widely. Some will be more of a "rainbow" like my Lunar Mist. Regardless, the principle is the same and we encourage more growth of canes from the base in climbers as we do in any rose, with adequate water, maybe some alfalfa to encourage basal breaks, and patience, patience, patience. The rose will "tell" you what it wants to do over time. Just be sure to bend the young canes sideways when it's young, as robust climbers like New Dawn can get pretty stiff and woody in their primary canes over time, and they're much harder to bend. Hope that helps. Cynthia

Nice, Lilyfinch! Bathsheba in her first year for me has had a lot of growth from the base to form a bushy structure but does have long wiry stems. The blooms are softer in color than LOS, fade a bit, but fragrance much stronger. LOS has been a bit more narrow/upright. I wouldn’t be without LOS in the garden and based on Bathsheba’s performance this year - I wouldn’t be without her either. Bathsheba

Wow, gorgeous gardens all! Mine is a total weedy dump in comparison, lol. Oh weel, it's mine and I'm happy with it. I quit thinking about a "dream" garden long ago. I don't have a big expanse of property to landscape. I only have my small suburban back yard to work with. I don't have the money to hire help and I've gotten too old to do it myself. I concentrate on maintenance now and not design. But I still love my roses and perennials anyway!

Hi, Lisa Su, and Friends, I guess I caught rose fever and took to ordering and planning more roses for spring in last few days to add to above orders.... I started looking up your roses and found ones I wished to add to my gardens... so I have ordered a few more also..... Souvenir de la Malmaison, Boubon 1843 rose, strong fragrance...nice big bush w/big blooms....for my femce border... Clotilde Soupert, polyantha , nearly thornless, strong moderate fragrance...actually may be a small rose that blooms in intense clusters like The Fairy...for my front hillside ground cover... And I’m planning on adding China Doll polyantha and Elegant Fairy Tale Roses to lower part of back yard hill, waiting for them to come available to order.... Oh, to plan my dream gardens. I now am up to 88 roses... roses in front yard...roses down side of house and lining back yard and some on hill by spring.... 20 new roses so far coming to plant....fun..fun.... Soon to sleep...per chance to dream...of roses...roses...roses.... oh, my! Post your photos, too? What are you favorites to have this spring? Happy Gardening! Kitty