Thanks! Just for clarification, the space is the side of my house and varies between about 5-6 feet wide from house to fence with about 15 feet of length available. I am wondering if I can cram a climber in flat against the wall, tied to a trellis, and taking up no more than 2 feet of space from the wall. So not grown like a shrub at all.

As an example, something like this. Is this realistic or not?https://www.redbubble.com/people/blossom/works/14059670-nahema-climbing-rose-my-garden?p=photographic-print

As for other climbers, it's surprisingly difficult to find a good variety around here despite a large market like Toronto. It's almost always the same 6-10 different climbers in all the nurseries around here. I'm a bit scared of ordering a rose through the mail and then caring for it before I can pop it in the ground--I usually like to see that it is healthy and growing before buying. Maybe some day I'll actually make the drive out to Palatine Roses.

If you think of the time you’ll spend trying to protect and coddle the wrong rose a drive to Palatine is nothing..

To echo Kitasei's insightful comment above, the amount of time it would take to train a climber as flat against the wall as the lovely Nahema picture you posted would be extensive and require pretty frequent maintenance that might be better spent on a more mannerly type of rose. I suspect that whoever grew that rose spends time every week training and caring for that rose to keep it so meticulously contained. You would have to decide that you want to put that much time into the rose to keep it that contained, and it might be much less effort to simply plant small roses that would stay in the 5-6' space on their own and concentrate on a climber in another spot.

Any climber that is happy in its location is going to want to send out blooming laterals separate from the main canes you grow. You want those laterals as much as possible, since that's what creates the lush kinds of bloom in that picture. Note too that in our zones, that rich bloom might only happen once or twice a year with some scattered blooms here and there in the rest of the year. That means with some constant monitoring I can keep my Sunrise Sunset contained within about a 5x5' square of earth, but only because I have a trellis behind her and I keep tucking those stray laterals into the arch pretty much every time I pass by. And this is for a rose that isn't "supposed" to climb and is listed as a 2' high groundcover rose - what you see is about as contained as I can keep it with such treatment, and it extends another 3' or so above this photo:

My philosophy on your dilemma of ordering a rose through the mail vs. ordering locally is that it's better to spend my $30 on a rose + shipping that suits my requirements and location than to spend $20 locally and have the rose either die or be a misfit for what I need. I don't do any care of the Palatine roses other than soaking them for a day or so and planting them immediately. They're shipped dormant so they're intended to be planted without any fussing and they are usually better cared for than most nursery roses. I lose way more nursery roses even if they're in huge 10 gallon pots because of untreated canker or other limited care that I just don't see in the roses from places like Palatine. Just my two cents, but it's really less of a risk in the long run to mail order from Palatine than to order a rose that looks OK for now but has been overfed fertilizers and will go into withdrawal when it hits your yard.

Cynthia

Has anyone had good results with Lady Ashe in zone 5? It's completely tip hardy here, and has started repeating on the laterals after I deadheaded them. It's only a year old own root. Edit to add this. - I don't have it against the house, so it was in the wind all winter. I suspect it might do ok in a colder zone against a house.

P TW Canadian tire carry allot of the Palatine roses..I'm sure you have one close by...good luck

Palatine has a beautiful climber called Dream Land, it’s hardy almost to the tip in zone 6a NY. I am an hour from Palatine and visit them a few times each year. They might offer it again this fall.

Listen to Cynthia. She knows.

Well, at least I know what I've killed personally (sometimes several times) - smile. I do grow Lady Ashe/Dixieland Linda here in zone 5 and it's not tip hardy here but I usually have at least some surviving cane. It's a nice rose but doesn't get very big for me. Good tip about Dream Land summers - I'll have to look that one up.
Cynthia

summers, so you have Dream Land? How tall does it get for you? I'm going back and forth on this one.

Open Garden in Ohio has it on the sale list, you got to get one! I have 4, my 2 yr old one is about 9-10’ tall, the other 3 they were planted last spring, had some mice rabbit damage this past winter they are about 3-5’ tall.

I saw that. I just didn't want to get it if it wouldn't climb. How cold did you get this winter?

Our coldest temp last winter was -4F.

I live around Toronto and I have grown Crimson Cascade, Don Juan, New Dawn and Eden. They won't climb in our zones. ND and Eden are the most vigorous of the four but they are not cane hardy unless we have a very warm mild winter like the one we had two years ago. In my garden only Teasing Georgia and Fourth of July grow large and resembles a very short climber. I've realized over the years that it is okay with me that I can't grow climbers. I hate to spring prune a large climber....getting old here...lol

Summer, I went ahead and got Dreamland and another one since I might not be able to make it. Thank you for the input. It really helped me make my decision. I hope you had a great time.

I am glad you got Dreamland! You will love it. My daughter and I went there yeasterday, we had a great time, we came hone with 5 roses. I will post photos on the Open Garden thread tonight. :-)

Thanks everyone. Lots of good info here.

Special thanks to rose_crazy_da about Palatine roses at Canadian Tire--they had a lot of different ones I did not see at other local nurseries! Many that I had never even heard of.

Turns out that a Butterfly Bush next to my patio did not make it through the winter, and so the space is big enough to try a climber on a trellis. If it works, I'll be able to see it from both the front and the back which is nice! I picked up a Kordes Florentina for $14...we'll see how it does.

Maybe you still have room for a rose tree..... Jackson Perkins has Wedding Dress rose tree for $12.95.

You picked a great rose for zone 5, PTW. Florentina is usually cane hardy and it loves to flower. Just remember that a climber takes longer to settle in than other roses. The rule of thumb is "first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap" for bush roses and you add another year for climbers. My Florentina bloomed some the first year but not as much as it will. You'll want to tie the canes as horizontally as you can to your trellis while they're small, because it's the canes it puts out from the horizontal canes that will bloom. If you let it grow straight up, you'll only get a few flowers from the very top of the rose.

Have fun and you should be happy with this rose.
Cynthia

Cynthia--should I start tying them this year, or wait til next year? The rose is still small (canes are about 2 feet long). Thanks!

It's usually good to have the trellis or arch ready to go behind a climber so that when the canes get long enough to reach the structure you don't have the risk of breaking off canes to get it in place. Once you have the structure there, you can encourage the canes horizontally as soon as they reach the structure. I have a climber that I didn't know climbed that's about 2' from the base of the nearby trellis, so I can't try tying the canes horizontally till they've stretched out long enough to reach it (though that means they're horizontal). For you, I'd go ahead and encourage them to fan out as soon as you're able to tie them. If you wait till next year they may get woodier and harder to convince to grow as you'd like them.

If you search for Paul Zimmerman online, he has some videos and pictures about training a rose climber that may be helpful.

Cynthia