I went out and had another look after googling and it IS thornless, so I think you are right. That makes me very happy because raspberry cream twirl is a climbing rose. Any advice on training one? These are my first roses ever.

It looks like you have a pretty trellis there! So I would tie up some canes in a fan shape to encourage basals and pull up the rose so to speak . If you do a search here, Cori Ann speaks highly and has wonderful photos of hers and can answer better . I don't grow it so I'm unsure of its exact habit . It does look very happy for you though !

Unfortunately, my trellis is just leaning against the wall because there is so much gravel underground where they built the wall that I cannot get the trellis in the ground except for about a foot away from the wall. My husband is going to run stainless steel cables horizontally the link of the wall so that I can train all of the climbers on it. Definitely not as pretty as the trellis but I think it will work.

That sounds beautiful to me !

Hi Sheryl! So here’s photos of my Raspberry Cream Twirl. The fence I have it on is over 6 feet, but probably under 8 feet in that area. It has canes that are 2-3 feet (or more) above the fence! I keep training the canes and trying them down laterally so it doesn’t get too crazy with those upright ones and so it will bloom even more. I obviously need to tie quite a few more down already! It’s a very fast grower, so I hope your hubby can get those wires completed so you can start tying it and training it this summer. :-) Enjoy it! It’s a great climbing rose!

Also, I have mine trained on wires along the fence. Don’t worry about how the wire looks... the roses will totally cover them up in no time! :-)

Cori Ann , My husband got the wires half done last evening, but underestimated the amount of hardware he needed and has to make a trip back to the store this morning. (In Germany everything closes at 8:00) The wires are barely visible, so I’m happy. By the end of today I hope to have all tied up. In our area it rarely goes below about 30 degrees and when we get snow, it doesn’t stay more than a day or two. There are people around here successfully growing palm trees in their yards. My roses didn’t lose all their leaves. Do you mean you take the leaves off by hand? How do you do that? It sounds impossible now that I’ve seen your pictures.

Cori Ann, please see my new post about stiff canes.

Yes Sheryl I remove leaves by hand after I prune them back hard in January. If you have snow, you definitely don’t need to do that so don’t worry about it! :-)