Really, too cool. I didn't know that plant suckered. I will keep an eye out on mine.

My ownroot 'Variegata di Bologna' suckers.

It is good to know I am not crazy! I do wonder why it has never suckered before...did your rose also wait?

How do you all grow yours? I bought one last year at the Antique Rose Emporium because my teenage daughter liked the wild colored flowers :) - no subtle colors for her! - but didn't realize at the time that it is a climber. Mine has been in a pot (repotted it into a large container this year) and it is just a large arching "mess" (but at least it has lots of blooms along the archways! Can't wait for it to bloom). I'm not quite sure what to do with it - maybe pillar it? I don't really have a spot along a fence or anything like that. The tendrils catch my husband every time he walks to the shed and I'm afraid I'm going to just find the whole plant "gone" or cut down to a nub one of these days!

I am planning to grow mine along a fence, but at the San Jose Heritage Garden they grow it as a free standing shrub. I saw it pruned this winter, and it is maybe 5'x5'. I can't remember how big it gets in the summer. This climate might not be the best for this rose so I don't know how big it can get if it really likes it where you are.
Masha
Do you all get a lot of proliferation on yours? I have heard it is really prone to it...

I grow mine without any support..it is in too much shade to be really sizable....

Mine is in a hostile position--last year it got cut back hard by drought, from which it suffered more than its neighbors. I just assume, from what I've seen of it, that it's going to be a big fountaining shrub, size depending to a considerable extent on pruning and conditions of cultivation. My plant is about three years old. After the first year of results in this bed I was afraid everything in it would die, or at best never flourish, but with years of heavy mulching the roses, many of them Bourbons and Foetida forms, are taking hold and the ground is improving.

Melissa

Why, Melva, you beat me to it!
I was going to post exactly the same thing but about a different rose, Louis XIV!
Frankly, I'm THRILLED.
I also have VdB, and am going thru and Pegging it, and my other Bourbons and HPs down. That MIGHT help keep it a little bit under control.
Ya know what's REAL FUN? Trying to Peg these babies in that FAMOUS OKLAHOMA WIND! Talk about a BLOODY BEATING!
haha!
albin

Melva,
I never did get around to wishing you happy birthday on your post. So I'll do it now: you have my best wishes in the coming year for good weather and much pleasure in the garden, and in life!
Melissa

Melva,

I am glad you are getting some birthday gifts from Mother Nature. Suckers are great. They seem willing to grow no matter how poorly I transplant them.

There may be something peculiar to some soils which promotes suckering. Just my theory because I have an abundance. I have had the usual Rugosa suckering which is about 20 new plants per year. Rose de Rescht has also made some new plants. More unusual is The Mayflower and now my Hybrid Musk has produced its first offspring.

Just enjoy.

Thanks Melissa...
re. suckers..years ago I met a woman who told me her Great Western suckered and I asked about it, and I was told that that rose did not sucker,Period. The person I asked was pretty adamant about it.