How to train a rose up a wall

How to Train a Rose up a Wall

In this lesson, we'll look at the roses you might have climbing up a fence or a wall, and how to prune and train these.

There are two types - climbers and ramblers - which have important differences, and this affects how they're pruned in winter.

Climbers

• Flower on stems the rose has grown that same year - flowering stems grow in spring.
• Begin flowering in June but often repeat flower through to autumn.
• Will always have a structural woody framework on the wall, then prune using the same principle as shrub roses - gradually replace the woody framework with younger stems.

Ramblers

• Flower on stems the rose has grown the previous year.
• Flower a bit later, around late June to July, and usually flower once per summer.
• After flowering, if they don't have hips, stems that have already flowered can be pruned off. Tie in the new shoots that appear later in the season.
• If it has hips, leave the flowered stems to enjoy the hips and then prune those off later.
• You might be tempted to cut off the new stems that grow after flowering, as they can be long and straggly, but you need to tie in these stems, as this is where the flowers will be next year.

How to Prune a Hybrid Rambling Rose

This is a rose called 'Purple East', a really old rose that's not found often these days. It's a multiflora hybrid.

• Rosa multiflora is a rambling species rose, and 'Purple East' is a hybrid of R. multiflora with something else.
• Hybridisation makes some of the roses confusing to prune - they don't naturally fall into one of the categories of rambler or climber because of mixed parentage.
• This is essentially a rambler, but there's still some of the woody framework that you'd get with a climber, so I'll bear that in mind when pruning.

Principles

• There are some long stems produced last year that will flower, like a rambler.
• I'm also going to leave the climber-like structural framework that exists because of the mixed parentage.

Process

1. Remove last year's ties.
2. Look for old, unproductive stems to take out.
3. Check for any dieback, including the tips of stems, and cut back to healthy stem to prevent that running further.
4. Like for the rose on the bender in the previous lesson, look for the short shoots that have flowered.

• Where they're too thin, prune them right back to a couple of buds after they come off the main stem (spur prune).
• Shoots that are quite long and reasonably thick can be left and tied in later, just taking the ends off where it gets a bit thin.

1. Try to pull out any stems that have grown up behind the wire, to put them in front of the wire instead, to prevent risk of rubbing and damage.
2. Once you're happy with what you've pruned, stand back and visualise how you'll tie in the remaining stems.
3. Start bending the stems and tying them in - we'll learn more about that next with an example I've already done.

• As in the previous lesson with the rose on the bender, keep the reel of string in your pocket, cutting off only after you've tied.

How to Create Support for a Climbing or Rambling Rose

Before you start training a rose, and preferably before you plant it, it's very important to have a structure in place first to tie into.

• This will often consist of horizontal wires spaced around 30-40cm apart, stretched between vine eyes that you screw into the wall.
• Wire of 2mm thickness is the best compromise between being thin enough to be pliable and tie around vine eyes, but thick enough not to rust quickly.

Rose 'Madame Alfred Carriere'

'Madame Alfred Carriere' is a really popular and versatile climber that can be grown on a south-facing wall in direct sun, but is also a really strong performer on a north-facing wall. Here, it's on an east-facing wall in the White Garden.

History of 'Madame Alfred Carriere' at Sissinghurst

• Another 'Madame Alfred Carriere' was the first plant ever planted by Vita at Sissinghurst. It was planted in 1930 and lived until about 2020, showing this rose can survive for 90 years.
• In 2017, I took hardwood cuttings so that we've got the original plant still surviving through the cuttings.
• This rose here was probably planted in the 1960s, but rejuvenation - pruning out old stems and encouraging new shoots - keeps it looking as good as it does, with lots of new potential for flowers both high up and low down.

How I Train 'Madame Alfred Carriere'

I've already pruned and tied in this rose. Here are the principles I've followed.

The woody framework:

• you can see some very old framework and then shoots of different ages going up the wall, from 2-7 years old, with new shoots coming off that have been tied back
• next year, I'll think about whether I can take out some of the oldest woody stems that don't have a lot of newer growth coming off them. I love the embedded history in the old stems, but I want the rose to persist and still be here in another 2-3 decades, so by removing the oldest growth and encouraging new, I'm allowing that to happen.

The younger stems:

• you can see the shoots I've trained - some I've left quite vertical as the wall is very high, so I want flowers high up.
• I also want flowers low down, so just like with the 'Gipsy Boy' on the benders, I've bent lots of the stems over so that all the buds along those bent stems will produce flowers
• I've made sure I've bent some shoots at all levels to encourage flowers all the way from top to bottom of this rose, while leaving some shoots vertical as growth shoots.

Climbers Have Different Growth Habits

• 'Madame Alfred Carriere' is a noisette climber that sends up very strong growth shoots, 9-12ft long every year, so you're almost forced to have lots of stems to tie in because it's a very vigorous rose.
• If it was a different rose with less growth then it would look sparser, so you'll be led by the rose - if it's full of growth and very healthy, you can leave much of it on without being too crowded in terms of flowers banging into each other, whereas a less powerful rose there's less to start with.
• It's a sweet spot between fullness and feeling overcrowded, which is very much guided by the rose.

Don't Be Afraid of Pruning Your Roses

• There isn't necessarily a right or wrong; there are principles, but the most important thing is to give it a go.
• The worst thing you can do is to do nothing, because the rose will just get old and stop flowering well and stop sending up new growth.
• Get in there and give your roses a prune and if you're unsure, look what happens the next year after what you did - how did it flower, did it send up a growth shoot - and that's the way you learn for the following year.

Repeat Flowering

'Madame Alfred Carrière' is a repeat-flowerer, starting as early as May but with the main flush in June. It has subsequent flushes in August and even September.

However, a lot of our roses just flower once in June, so it's nice to have something else happening in the space before and after. To achieve this, we plant another plant with the rose.

There are lots of things you can use, such as:

• an early spring-flowering clematis that will scramble through the rose and flower in May
• a late-flowering clematis, such as Clematis viticella, that we will prune down to ground level at the same time as pruning the rose in winter. The clematis will lightly climb through the rose and then flower afterwards in July to September
• we've grown a vine with a rose called 'Gloire de Dijon', a lovely tea rose with soft orange flowers, but foliage that is always prone to blackspot and drops off. We grow the vine through it to cover the wall with vine leaves - the rose flowers are studded through them, and you don't notice the rose doesn't have many leaves.

If you want to grow once-flowering roses, think about what else you can grow with them to flower before and/or after.