I am hoping to plant some ramblers on posts and wires, to edge my allotment. I want advice on how low I can get these roses. I would like to grow them like stepover apples, an extreme cordon where the leader is bent fully horizontal. Could I keep them at around 1m high but very long/wide?

The roses are: Nastarana, Leontine Gervaise and a harkness modern climber, Perpetually Yours. I also have a spare Goldfinch (but I think that one would be a bit 'twiggy' for posts and wires. I also need to keep the width as thin as possible or our paths will disappear. Excitingly, I have a whole new bed to plant with roses which arrived this week - R.californica, Cardinal Hume, Duc de Guiche, Summer Song, R.Glauca, cotinus, a good blue hibiscus: I think I am going to go for plum and silver because I have some great heucheras which get hammered with vine weevil at home, some artemisia, dianthus and a fair number of hardy geraniums. On the other hand, the vegetable growing areas are shrinking - still, we may as well faint from overdose of beauty as from starvation. So what do you think re. the rambling edge - can this pruning and training exercise be achieved or will my strawberry and asparagas beds vanish beneath a sprawl of prickly wood?