Accidentally purchased a climbing rose. Tag says it will grow 8-12'. I love the yellow blooms, but never had any intention of having a trellis in my garden. Zero experience with them. Plus the location I planned on planting it is on the bottom level of a 3 tiered garden. If I have a large trellis there it will block the higher 2 tiers... Can I use a small trellis? From what I've read they need something sturdy. Sounds like a large one is in order... What happens to these roses on a trellis come winter? Will they die off and start climbing again in spring? Can I hard prune them and let them start over? Or will I have to have a large one for years of continued support?

Your climber will bloom extra well if you train it horizontally. Is there room for that?

There's another option -- make a tripod out of rebar, plant the rose in the center, and train the canes to wrap around the tripod. You can keep it tighter than if you fanned it out horizontally, but you'll still get the benefit of pegging if you keep the canes at 45 degrees while spiraling around the tripod. To maintain, trim the laterals back after blooming but don't cut the main canes back by more than a third -- and that really only in late Winter each year.

:-)

~Christopher

I wrote an article for this site once on climbing roses. You might get some ideas from it.

https://garden.org/ideas/view/...

zuzu said:I wrote an article for this site once on climbing roses. You might get some ideas from it.

https://garden.org/ideas/view/...

Bookmarked the article! I was looking for training methods to help me train my Lady of Shallot climber in nearby future.

I'm glad you mentioned your article, Zuzu. It was new to me, and very helpful.

Before you get an elaborate trellis set up, tell us what rose it is and we can advise you about whether it would actually climb in your zone. I have a ton of "climbing" roses that survive OK in my zone 5, but lose all their canes over the winter, so they only recover to be 3-4' bushes in my zone. Some climbers that are commonly sold won't survive zone 5 at all (like Don Juan) so you can treat that one like an annual. Other climbers can be monsters that would eat a small trellis for lunch. The small trellis sets usually sold are for things like clematis, not plants like roses that need a more firm support for the canes.
A lot of the answer in zone 5 Illinois depends on the rose.
Cynthia

@porkpal, the horizontal trellis I'm seeing online are probably a bit too tall as well. 5'. I would need something like 3'.

@nippstress, tag says Rosier Grimpant. It's also called Golden Showers. Does that help?

It's a beautiful rose. I might keep it and put it in another area. I'll just have to find a different yellow rose to put with my other rose bushes.

If I use an arch trellis thing, do I need two to grow on each side to get an even look?

By reputation, Golden Showers is supposed to be hardy to below zone 5 though I haven't had that luck yet. I have had at least one die on me but they were "body bags" from the department store so I didn't expect much anyway. The 8-12' sounds about right when mature for this rose but it takes a climber a good 4 years to mature to its full size, so don't let its modest growth in the first couple of years fool you. You were right to read the tag and check out the spaces before you get it planted.
You can train a climbing rose around an obelisk when young if the canes are flexible enough so it doesn't take up a lot of horizontal space and can stay within about 4' of vertical space if you're lucky. I don't think this one is a house eater in our zones and it wouldn't probably cover an arch trellis very well. We usually need a really robust climber like the Canadian roses in our climate to cover an arch. I have one arch that have a couple of climbers on each end of the arch like you describe but they don't really extend over the arch very well and the coverage is unpredictable in any given year.
Bottom line, this isn't a rose that would fit well on the bottom of a tiered space. You probably want a more modest sized yellow rose in that spot.
Cynthia

@nippstress, thank you for the very informative response. I'm going to return it tomorrow. Too much trouble, not enough time to worry about.