Another way to treat ramblers/climbers

I had to share this link.... I love everythng about this: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Beautifully photographed and inspirational. No excuse not to put some climbers in now hey...

Hi Simon,
very interesting. I might try that with a couple of mine and see what happens. It might solve the problem of climbers with nowhere to put them, too.
Barbara B

Aha! Thank you Simon for highlighting that link.
Articles I have seen in the past show roses pegged out to the ground, spreading widely. The concept shown in this link could solve a few problems for me because that is pegging with a difference.
Mme. Hardy and Crocus Rose are two roses I have that hit out across the path every summer no matter how hard I have pruned them. So I think I will have a look at them now and tie them down instead.

I have seen this method before, but not done on roses. I've seen it done with bouganvillea and they call it cartwheeling and it's the first step in making a standard boug... you wrap it around on itself until you get a strong vertical leader shoot up after which you trim the wrapped up portion off to make the new straight strong leader the 'trunk' of the standard. Looks pretty effective on roses doesn't it?

Hey that looks great. thanks for the link. Can't wait to have a climber big enough to do it with!

I thought I'd done that with Just Joey, who suddenly threw out a long cane. Lots of new growth appeared and lots of buds. I got quite excited until the buds opened - it was Dr Huey - rootstock. Doh!!
I'll try it with Othello, and maybe Falstaff, next.

Today I worked around my New Dawn rambler and instead of chopping off everything that was reaching out to grab me, I tucked them back into the bush. It will be interesting to see how it flowers next spring.
I imagine this method of control will tame the rambler so that it produces less huge canes.

Definitely going to try it with my Mme Hardy like you suggested Simon, and my Heritage has thrown out 2 lovely big canes just begging to be tied down.

Give this some thought, we Bonica and it throws out some long canes, what do the members think.

My Bonica doesn't send out long canes Carole... I'd be checking it out as a possible rootstock candidate too.

Billndee wrote:I imagine this method of control will tame the rambler so that it produces less huge canes.

Maybe... on the other hand it might cause it to form a whole lot more too as each of the laterals that are awakened by the horizontal stems will each turn into a long leader. Maybe because it has to divide its resources between all the laterals their individual growth of each will be reduced too... will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I've tucked my Don Juan and Jeanne La Joie.

I'm a bit embarrassed to resuscitate such an old thread, but I spent a good hour and a half on the weekend trying this technique on an over-exuberant rambler (no idea re: precise identification, but it would take over the whole fence and next door's garden if it could!).

It was not an easy job, and the idea of simply twining the canes on themselves did not really work, (I resorted to rubberised wire but would use twine in the future) but the result is much tidier than the original sprawl. I will be interested to see how it goes over summer.

Hi Christie,
send in a photo of the rambler - I'm sure there'll be someone here who can identify it for you.
Barbara B