I fully agree with you, Melissa. Once I get the main central area of my garden done, I hope to start in on the monster ramblers in a big way...bart

Of course i agree. I've lost count of the rambler collection. They are magnificent roses. Many of mine are growing freestanding. I've planted some of the Wichuranas to tumble down a bank to a road and others out in the field. Some of them have a beautiful habit of growing up and arching over. We are also building many rebar arches.

OMG your disease is spreading like a Lady Banks over a shed! I felt fairly safe from the Rambler virus, since while I have 6 3/4 acres bordered by trees begging for roses to scramble into them, I also have goats. And as anyone who knows goats knows, you can have goats, or you can have roses; but you should never count on having both at once. I've evidently spent one nanosecond too many dreaming over your post because I think I figured out a way to do it. "Horse panel" fencing around the base of the tree. It might not be the most elegant solution, but who's going to be looking at the base of the tree when the rose in the tree is blooming? hehehe Oh, Antique Rose Emporium...we need to talk.

Ramblers are my favorites. I am constantly adding to their supports, it's embarrassing. This year I even painted large tree branches and used those. Some of them are growing up AND sideways along crappy fences I made.
The thing I made for Edmond Proust is made out of rebar, old springs from a couch, heavy wire, it's rediculous. Luckily you can't see any of it.
By the way if anyone is looking for a huge, hardy, healthy, REPEATING rambler you need this rose.

So true about Edmond Proust. Whatever the support it will be completely obscured.

I can only join you in spirit, but I can't think of anything more magnificent than one of these giant roses, except for a bunch of them. They give a certain aura to a garden that nothing else can; I suppose grandeur mixed with a spirit of wildness best expresses it for me.

Ingrid

Please clarify a climber & a rambler:
for instance, is a rambler always a climber, a spreader (big bush)?

So glad to know I have many fellow addicts to keep me company! Debbie, let the passion take hold. I can only dream about numbers of trees able to support ramblers, and certainly hope you start growing them, with protection as you say. I know about goats, our neighbors have them running around loose. By the way, most ramblers are very easy to root, the problem generally being finding mother plants. A lot of mine come from cuttings and plants a rambler-loving friend has given me over the years.
I like your definition, Ingrid.
Pam, I'm growing a lot of ramblers freestanding as well, as my rambler population well outnumbers my supports. It certainly is reassuring to know they can be kept this way.
mauvegirl, "rambler" generally refers to a small- or medium-flowered once-blooming climbing rose, usually tall growing, well branched and well covered with foliage. They have a graceful, more or less lax habit and are smothered in bloom when in flower. "Climber" broadly speaking refers to roses that have larger flowers that repeat, have a stiffer growth habit and sparser, larger foliage, and don't get as tall as the ramblers. Naturally there are all kinds of roses that have mixed characteristics, for example the Barbier and Van Fleet ramblers, which have the rambler lax habit and good foliage, but large flowers often with a tendency to rebloom, or the Pemberton hybrid musks, many of which have the rambler grace of habit and good foliage, but on smaller plants and with good rebloom. And the Noisettes and Tea Noisettes, large flowered, reblooming, but making large plants often graceful in growth and handsomely foliaged.
Melissa

I see the difference. Thank you.

I ordered 'Erinnerung an Brod' during the Vintage sale. I haven't received an email either way.

Altorama, I would actually love to see pictures of your rambler SUPPORTS ...yes, the supports,maybe a photo taken in winter would let them show through (though I do have my nerve asking, since I myself am so bad about posting photos, but maybe you are less electronically challenged than I am...)Since my garden is in the midst of a wood land, with no house , walls or other structures,I have to invent structures for climbers all the time. In the long run, there's a kind of advantage to this, in that it stimulates creativity. regards, bart

I love this thread!

Melissa, your description is irresistible "they cool the air and fill it with fragrance, offer food and protection to birds, establish conditions favorable for trees to seed, sequester carbon, and do this with no fertilizer and, after the first year, no watering."

The back of our garden ends in a fairly steep slope with a variety of trees and ... weeds. Sounds like this spot might be perfect for some ramblers..... Whoo-eee!!!!
Can't wait! (And we have not goats, just the occasional chicken so we're set!).

Annalyssa

PS- By the way, how do they establish conditions favorable for trees to seed and "sequester carbon"?

Hmm, I can take a shot at that. Trees seed better in somewhat protected conditions, for instance after a forest fire clears an area the first plants to grow are small plants and shrubs that are tough. In the shade and protection of those shrubs new trees will sprout and grow, eventually shading out the shrubs as they grow into maturity. At least that's what I learned in school ;o)

All plants sequester carbon, they take in CO2 and separate the carbon from the oxygen, releasing the oxygen back into the atmosphere and using the carbon to increase their own mass.

I hope that was not too inaccurate...

The real reason I was posting was to comment on how amazingly fast the ramblers I got to plant along the back fence of my property are growing. Rosa Helenae and Rosa gentiliana have both sent out 4' canes and when I had to move them recently I needed a shovel to loosen the roots holding their pots down to the ground. I can't wait until I can plant them in the fall, it will be so much nicer to look at pretty roses than at ugly fence and the neighbor's collection of trailers and cars.

Peachymomo, yes, that's what I meant. Good luck with your ramblers; it sounds like they're off to a good start!
Annalyssa, the area you're talking about sounds promising. If you like the sound of ramblers, do be sure the trees are large and sturdy enough to support some big roses, 4 meters and upward at maturity, depending on the variety, heavy, and able to catch wind like sails. I don't know if you read my post about how a spring storm felled half a 15 meter tall black locust that had 9 meters of rambler 'Treasure Trove' scrambling up it. The tree split in half and came down with most of the rose: we're still cleaning up the mess.
Melissa

Bart, I would be happy to upload pics when the supports are visible!

Hey Bart - your situation sounds somewhat similar to ours - you are surely right about getting creative - but then again, surely this is why hazel has been grown - we are making great use of hazel poles as lashed together tripods.
Regarding differences between ramblers and climbers - I have usually worked on a loose definition according to how the plants grow and are pruned. Ramblers, as far as I know, regularly regrow from new basals so the entire old woody basal canes are removed during pruning. Climbers, which I confess to not loving so much, will grow from all over the place, often flowering on the new seasons wood (so pruning can be less fussy and more about shaping and control) and is generally more of the heading back rather than complete removal of canes. I should say that when (or if) I prune, I do it willy nilly, whenever I have secateurs to hand or have been lashed by stray villainous canes (off with their heads!)
If you have a hilly topography, ramblers can possibly come into play by allowing them to be used as ground covering plants -although, there are also some cunning set-backs to this idea, as anyone trying it will soon find out if general weeding is required (can you tell I have been pulled into this, to my regret) but on a wild and unused bank, there is nothing nicer than a sort of vegetative barbed wire with seasonal flowers.
Growing ramblers in a poplar wood is a definite possibility for us since the canopy is both high (very high) and light - I am intending to actually grow ariel swags suspended from tree to tree on high ropes between the poplars (Oho, all those gigantic ramblers which I have never had room for).
Because it was a non-natural plantation, the trees are both regularly spaced and of the same size and age - we are going to try to build platforms and ropewalks as well - especially since we have spotted purple emperors flitting about the canopy (we also have oak and sallow - perfect caterpillar food plants). I am excitedly ordering hundreds of wood anemones and little blue bulbs(and have been in a seed sowing frenzy - there are now no seats or tables or walls available anywhere throughout the house, garden or allotment, while the greenhouse is so full, I have been suspending shelves from the roof). Needless to say, at least one day a week is spent in a kind of slumped torpor (usually after a stay in the woods) since we are glazed with exhaustion, somewhat numb and vacant. Reuben spends his day reading the sports pages in rubbish rags.....while I sit at the keyboard, listlessly flitting between screens (obviously, this is such a day). Sometimes, we barely make it into adult clothing (instead of the old t-shrts and slipper combos we favour - we are not at the level of 'onesies' yet!). The rain falling outside even provides a guilt alleviating reason to stay semi-dressed indoors (eating biscuits and toast) although I am still horribly conscious of the many hours of berry picking still to be finished.
My tomatoes though, are, without a trace of modesty, the best on the allotment (more to luck than judgement) having romped through the growing season without a single check to growth (this is a rare occurrence) and are as tall as I am (not very) with 5 or 6 good trusses - so as well as the endless jamming, there will be weeks of saucing.....but after last years utterly dismal fail, a break in the sweaty spoon waving has dimmed my memory so it seems like a pleasant prospect still.....and we do get great ketchups and passatas.

Too much of a good thing seems to be my current status.

First, the boss hires someone to rake up the horse corrals, sure I would love to have all that...holy cow that is a ton of used hay! I think I will be hauling and spreading it for a month. And it needs to be topped with wood chips...more hauling and spreading.

And then there was the pallet+ of free sod.... As much as I enjoy not having grass in the front yard, having just dirt is not the best either for keeping the house clean and with a new grandson, guess the sod will bridge the gap until I can afford to brick the walk.

Oh, you have a few months before the infant starts rampaging.......
And Kips, you know you are the dynamite hard worker of the forum........

Melissa, all I can say is I'm with you all the way on a glorious over-abundance of roses. My vision of Paradise.

Diane

I wholeheartedly echo the sentiment in this thread, Melissa. I hope I never reach the point when I say my garden is "full", and with the percentage of roses that fail in our zone 5 climate, and my ridiculous tendency to push limits and let roses gloriously mingle into rose chaos, I don't see that happening in the near future. However, I do envy you your freedom to choose the huge ramblers and once-bloomers and let them explode to their heart's content. "Too much beauty" isn't something we have to worry about in the rose world, thank goodness.

Cynthia