Very nice, HY!

I find Pierre de Ronsard to be a rose that improves in its repeat as it gets a few years older, better as the years go by. For some gardeners it seems to be almost a once bloomer for a few years, then improves.

Yours is off to a very nice (and very quick) start!

Oh, thank you, Rosefolly, for telling me that about the improving repeat. That's very encouraging because I'd read so much (I think it as on these forums?) about Pierre being stingy and a poor repeater, so I'd been resigned to him only blooming once a year. I will keep my fingers crossed then! :-)

HY

It's amazing how much this rose has grown in one year! I predict it will be a knockout in your garden. Pictures when it blooms again, please.

Wow, I wish my roses, especially the Hybrid Teas, had some of that vigor! Great pics of a wonderful rose.

Haha - oh, don't worry, Ingrid - there will be TONS of photos!! ;-) I think I take photos of my garden every day.

Thanks, Krista - yes, I was really surprised by the growth, to tell you the truth. I had read so much about the "sleep, creep, leap" thing with climbers that I wasn't expecting much the first year and then he just started growing... and growing... and growing! I was actually getting worried because I only have a tiny suburban garden and that is literally all the fence he has to grow on, otherwise he will be out on the street, blocking the pavement) - so I was worried that if he's grown so much in one season, what is he going to do next year? Also if he puts out another basal shoot, where on earth am I going to train it? I wanted to keep the area low around him for other plants, like delphiniums... but anyway, I've been told that hopefully he won't grow much "longer" in either direction this year and will put out flowering shoots instead. Fingers crossed!

HY

Lisa - your comment made me laugh! Yes, all that "seeing him nude" and "stripping him naked" did sound very naughty - hahaha!

No, our winters are too mild really (we're still getting up to 20 C (68F) in the daytime sometimes and it only goes down to around 8 - 10 C (46 - 50F) at night so to be honest, none of the roses were going dormant. They were still setting buds. But with Spring coming in Sep just around the corner, we sort of have to force them into dormancy ;-)

A few of the roses do drop some leaves - but mostly, you have to strip them all off by hand. (You can see from the 2nd photo above - that's what Pierre looked like last week, still completely covered - so all of that had to be removed yesterday!

The training was actually a happy accident due to my newbie anxiety - haha! I didn't realise that climbers have canes that remain lax and can be tied up later - the rose people here in Perth told me they just let the new shoots grow wild and then tie them all in properly after pruning, when they can see better. But I thought if I didn't train them as they grew, they would "solidify" into the wrong shape! So I was there wrestling with Pierre all through the growing season, tying & retying him to the fence as he grew. I have a LOT of thorn pricks & scratches to show for it - haha! But it did mean that when it came to pruning yesterday, the guy who was helping me said that I'd done a good enough job with the training so we didn't need to re-tie any of the canes at all. :-)

Funnily enough, I've discovered that I really enjoy training things (probably a masochistic tendency - hah!) and I'm now looking for more climbers to grow in my garden! Sadly, not roses as I'm out of sunny walls - but I'm looking at clematis and any other climbers I can find. Oh, and I've just planted lots of sweet pea seedlings. It's my first time growing them - I've never seen them in "real life" - so I'm excited!

HY

HY, your garden looks amazing. Eden looks so big in 1 year. Eden is a beautiful rose. I never heard it is stingy but other way around.

Oh, you gotta put pics once it blooms. I cannot wait.

HY, you are very fast learner and becoming to be a pro in this.

HY, get gloves that comes to your elbows. A good pair which will help you so you won't have scratches that bad. I just got mine in May. I have not used it yet but it is so soft. Mine is goatskin palm and cowhide gauntlet. My neighbor bought me this as a gift. I love it so much :)

So when comes prunning I am using this..:)

Jin