zuzu said:Lilylady, don't buy Dorothy Perkins or Excelsa. They're once-bloomers, they have no fragrance, and they're highly susceptible to powdery mildew, and perhaps to other diseases in your climate. Look for Super Dorothy and Super Excelsa instead.
You're right about the Vigorosa series being wrong for those locations. Even in California they never spread more than 2 or 3 feet. They would never "drape" properly.
With all due respect, Zuzu - Your opinion I respect, your use of climbing roses I have been trying to emulate, and your success with the same I deeply envy... But... Different people have different experiences with the same roses.
It's true that Vigorosa roses and most groundcover roses will not produce any 'cascading' effect. That said, the canes on my Toscana Vigorosa are pretty thin, not quite so thin as those of most ramblers, but almost. They tend to grow out horizontally. In their first year they are already highly suggestive of ground covers, approaching four feet wide and not so much as two feet tall. Possibly,cool night time weather actually promotes growth. Or perhaps terrible conditions do. Mine are growing - with some soil amendment and supplemental water - where weeds fail. Perhaps the other Vigorosa roses behave differently.
I don't know why my Super Dorothy and Super Excelsa failed in NJ. They would have been on their own roots. I think they were small plants when they came from VG. Almost certainly they were not watered or fertilized enough. That said, Sophie's Rose grew marvelously under slightly worse conditions a few feet away. Whatever the reason, they were a complete failure in zone 6b. When I saw Super Dorothy growing at VG it was treated as a trailing plant and it was blooming. I photographed it competently; but it was one of the very few photos out of the several hundred I took that week that I could not bring myself to publish at RoseFile. So I cannot say I like the way it looks when competently grown as a trailing plant.
To Porkpal's point, I'm growing Red Cascade here and am happy with it. I grew it with some success in NJ, too. It's definitely an easy-care plant. I think it could be trained to trail nicely. It is almost evergreen here in zone 7b. It occurs to me that having leaf cover through much of the year would be a valuable trait in an effective ground cover plant. Finally, the dark red color of its blooms is great.
Though I've never grown it, I also like the idea of climbing Pinkie.
If the true cascading effect isn't important, one could simply use short roses such as miniature roses.
And after thinking about this for a while I'm starting have more respect for the use of honeysuckle. One wall in my garden is treated with Paul Transon and Lonicera Major Wheeler. Still waiting for it to take off. Check back in three or four years...
