Rambler Roses: up trees or not?

We are surrounded by trees at Veddw Garden and when we first came we thought it was a super idea to grow rambler roses up them. So whenever we could afford a day off and a plant we went off to a wonderful rose nursery in the Cotswolds, at North Nibley and bought several. It made a great day out.

This nursery man, Keith Marshall, once sighed at my proffered list: ‘yet more big white ramblers’ and indeed several were just that. And many years later one or two have at last appeared, maybe a hundred yards up in the trees. Scarcely visible. Certainly offering very little spectacle or scent.

However, after a random visit to David Austen Roses we fell in love with Rosa Belvedere and started that up a huge holly. It has a slight scent, now impossible to enjoy as it has smothered the holly and gone huge but high. It is amazing, beautiful and very difficult to do justice to in a photograph.

We also covered the unsightly garage with Kiftsgate, which settled down happily, creating one of the first green roofs in the country as a variety of other plants joined it. Originally I would get up on the roof and arrange the huge stems across the roof, to spread it all out. I wouldn’t dare attempt that today and I have nightmares about what we will do if the roof collapses. But the rose in flower is wonderful and as you stand between that and Rosa wichurana, now Rosa lucieae, which has spread for about a hundred yards along the opposite bank, you may wonder which rose is creating the amazing scent on the air. Often. Not always. Scent does seem to depend on the weather.

And that is the way to grow a rambler, I have decided. You need a large space and to give the thing maybe no support at all. Then it will spread and spread, layering itself and spreading scent and flower for yards and yards. All within sight and smell. Sadly, you will also have trees and shrubs seed themselves into the middle, unreachable amongst the thorns. Charles usually somehow gets them out, though I keep suggesting we let them grow and see if the rose goes up with them.

One of the Cotswold roses was Wickwar, bred by Keith Steadman, which the RHS describes as a compact, dense, rambling rose to 3.5m tall. I’m not sure about the compact - it’s another enormous spreader. I originally planned this to grow up the trees at the edge of the garden, but then our fibre cables were strung above it and we started pulling it down. Which was a great idea, creating an enormous hedge of richly scented flowers and beautiful grey foliage. You must move to a large garden in the country and do this thing! Rambling Rector should have been alongside it, but has so far, many years on, failed to appear.

When we got married, surprise surprise, we were given another big white rambler - Wedding Day. Here it is.

That looks fine, perhaps. Except that Charles is standing on our next door neighbour’s roof for that photograph. The rose is huge and hardly visible.

So, visit us in June and you will have some treats. But I’m not sure that Mme. Alfred Carrière will be one of them. Where is this rose best to go? I grew it on a pergola once and stared up in frustration as it flowered above my head. I removed it and preferred the pergola empty. Reluctant to be without this much praised rose though, I then grew it into some shrubs, where, at last, (took some time) it flowers. And then it goes over rather horribly.

Albertine, beautiful, prickly, sumptuous, scented and necessary, Albertine is doing better, managing to be nearer our noses. And Charles thinks it goes over prettily. I would forgive it almost anything.

You will, of course, now rush to visit Veddw Garden and see distant white ramblers, waving from the summit of a tree or two. But if you have suddenly fallen in love with the idea of hundreds of big white ramblers and every other sort besides, you might want to book to visit the National Collection, which does infinitely better than us at growing them. A swoony afternoon if it’s not pouring with rain. See this post about it and Country Life too.

Charles:

This year has been the best ever for Kiftsgate and Luciae- their combined scent is just gorgeous . Wickwar too is huge- it has stems extending 5 metres at least. As for Anne’s estimate of the size of the first two. Ahem – reduce these in your mind by about 80%! Such a shame that the majority of our ramblers are now best viewed with binoculars but then they are 30 odd years old. I think we should plant more- lots more- and then train them sideways.

Anne

Hm. I didn’t actually measure them.

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And this was last year on here: