Vertical beauty

It's time to consider adding climbing roses to the garden, letting them cover your walls, fences, arches and pergolas with colour and scent, says Anne Swithinbank

- Anne Swithinbank

CLIMBING roses are perfect for clothing the vertical surfaces of a garden with alluring flower shapes, colours and fragrances. Choose your cultivars carefully as you might fall in love with the fragrant, creamy-apricot blooms of old-fashioned ‘Desprez à Fleur Jaune’ but can you accommodate a rose capable of topping 20ft (6m)? Many gardeners have a soft spot for the thornless old Bourbon rose ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’, but though the fragrant pink flowers are lovely and the plants tolerant of poor soils, they can also be prone to mildew – a problem for those of us who choose not to spray.

Good, deep soils

The best approach is to analyse the space or structure a rose will fill. Note its size and the background colour. It’s sad to see white-flowered roses looking lost against a whitewashed wall, or red ones like ‘Étoile de Hollande’ disappearing against red brick. On the whole, roses like good, deep soils and thrive on well-nourished clay. They also appreciate a sunny position and don’t tolerate competition from overhanging growth or nearby trees and hedges. Yet some roses will cope well on poorer soils and a few climbers will flower well in light shade. Strong fragrance is often a number-one requirement, and for wildlife gardens single or semi-double blooms are ideal for attracting pollinating insects.

Disease-resistant roses