If you like the look of the English roses, check out David Austin's website - www.davidaustinroses.com and consider requesting a free catalog. One of my favorite Austin reds is William Shakespeare 2000 - deep red with the wonderful old fashioned many-petaled quartered rose form. It hardy here in Northern Michigan so you should certainly be OK in Columbus. A beautiful golden yellow Austin is Golden Celebration - truly awesome. Julia Child is a beautiful yellow floribunda. The Austin roses tend to get bigger than floribundas, and are in the shrub category. I like Iceberg for a white but some folks say they have problems with blackspot with it. One of my favorite hardy climbers (actually a shrub but can be trained as a beautiful climber) is Dortmund. Cane hardy for me, which is important in a climber. Good luck in your choices I'm sure others will have great suggestions too.

Thanks, My local nursery has some austin roses, so I'm seriously considering the WS2000 as it seems to be a popular and reliable choice. I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick to Austin/English roses now, but now I have the battle of deciding which ones I should choose out of the wide variety of the ones available.............such a hard decision as I like many of them.

Jeff, a helpful website is "Help Me Find". I posted the link below. You can search specific roses and see how hardy they are and what they look like.

Here is a link that might be useful: Help Me Find Roses

Jeff, you might want to go over to the Antique Roses board, and see if you can find anyone in your area who has grown the roses you are interested in.
Austin roses aren't "Antiques" or Old Roses, but many people think of them that way, who commonly post there, and may be helpful to you.

Jeri

The shape you admire in Belinda's Dream is called high-centered or Hybrid Tea form. The plant type is shrub (upright and spreading). I am not sure whether BD will be cane-hardy in your area, probably so most years.

WS2000 would be a good choice. A light yellow that is very disease resistant is Prairie Harvest. It has high-centered flowers with pretty good fragrance.

Quadra is an extremely hardy and disease-resistant red climber. For a brighter red, Ramblin' Red has been recommended by several midwestern growers here.

Jeff, not sure if you've ever been there, but Columbus Garden of Roses (Whetstone Park) would be worth a look. Most of the park is formal hybrid tea/modern beds, but there are nice displays of climbers and an antique rose section. They are having a rose festival June 9 and 10, it would be good to see some nice mature roses at the peak of their bloom.

They also have an Earthkind garden of low maintenance roses. There are some nice Griffith Buck roses there.

Eric

Here is a link that might be useful: Columbus Garden of Roses

Thanks for all the suggestions! I went to my local nursery today and they carry about 15 varieties of Austins. I was pretty set on WS2000 and picked one up........last one left hiding in the center of hundreds of roses and in great shape....although small. I was considering getting a Lady Emma Hamilton to complement WS, but they were all out. I originally wanted yellow, but golden celebration, and graham thomas turned out to be larger growers than I needed in the area, so I leaped for a Pat Austin as I heard some good thing about it. I'm sure WS2000 and Pat Austin are common choices, but they are gorgeous none the less. Both are babies, but PA does have small buds on it. I planted both already, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. What can I expect from the roses in terms of growth and blooms this year? WS2000 is quite small at only around 16 in tall and PA is at 24 in tall at the moment. Being new to these roses, do they require any special fertilization protocols? I havn't fertilized them yet, as I am going to give them some time to acclimate to the soil I just put them in, but how soon and heavy should I fertilize these Austin roses? I only bought a small box of miracle gro 18-24-16 powder rose fertilizer to be mixed into liquid form, just so I had it. I was unsure what would work best. Any suggestions would be great! I'm hoping for at least a little action from both of them this year. I have WS2000 and PA planted in front of a violet rhododenron on a 2nd level that is getting ready to bloom and next to an Endless Summer Hydrangea with blue blooms, so the variety of colors would be quite impressive. I may even purchase some more Austin roses if possible, but I still have to fit in Belinda's Dream yet.

I have still held off on the climbing rose as of yet as I still need to build the trellis this week, however I did manage to pull out the selection from the local nursery. The trellis will be quite large at 8-9ft tall and fairly wide to cover the width of the bay window, so a large climber would be preferable. Here is the selection the nursery offers.........I prefer a deep red.......but I won't necessarily limit myself to red.

All Ablaze
America
Autumn Sunset
Blaze(improved)
Blaze of Glory
Brite Eyes
Candy Land
Don Juan
Dreamweaver
Eden
Fourth of July
Golden Showers
High Society
Jacobs's Robe
New Dawn
Night Owl
Pearly Gates
Red Eden
Scent From Above
Sky's The Limit
Social Climber
Stairway to Heaven
Valentine's Day
Westerland
White Dawn
White Eden
Winner's Circle

Hey Cincy,

Yes, I have been to Whetstone........it was one of my main inspirations for planting more roses this spring. I went by last June before the festival and the majority were not in bloom, but by late June, they were in full ensemble and looked spectacular. I now commonly go there just to relax amongst all the roses. I was even there last year during the big windstorm and a very large old oak tree fell down just a couple feet from me by the creek that you pass over to the entrance.

I don't like the looks of any of those choices for a large climber in zone 5. I'd recommend ordering a Quadra online instead. It's red and hardy and disease resistant.

Don't fertilize your new roses until they get settled. I'd wait until they bloom and then fertilize. I like Rosetone as a fertilizer because it has a nice blend of organics but anything is fine. Your roses should bloom the first year, although I recall my WS2000 not blooming its first year for me but I started with a smaller plant.

The red climber you want is Ramblin' Red. It is bred by Bill Radler (the Knockout guy). Landscapers like Knockout roses because they can't kill them.

Prairie Harvest is a yellow Buck rose.
Earthsong is a pink Buck rose.
Griff's Red is a red Buck rose.
Paloma Blanca is a white Buck rose.

Well, after looking at Ramblin Red and Quadra, I would say they are both solid choices, although I might be leaning slightly more in favor of Ramblin Red. I did a search at my local nurseries and none of them seem to have it. What are some online locations that are reputable where I could purchase two of those climbers? I checked some sites, but none of them carried either one. Hopefully, I can get a hold of them fairly quickly. Thanks.

Check the website helpmefind.com and they'll have a list of vendors for each rose. Then check Dave's Garden Watchdog for feedback on that nursery. With those two websites you should be able to find a good place to get any rose from.

Quadra is much more BS resistant then Rambling Red here. Actuall RR is not resistant at all, very different from Knock out in this aspect.
Olga