Climbing vs Rambling Roses: The 8 Major Differences!

Hello, my dear gardeners. The difference between climbing roses and rambling roses. Thank you, Linda, for posting a question. Well, I came up with eight of the differences, and the first one will determine whether you have these beautiful blooms from the beginning of summer all the way to the first frost, or you will have a spectacular show, but only once a year, and then your rose will go into this very quiet, green stage. Majority of climbers are repeat bloomers, and they bloom through the season all the way to the fall, and most ramblers produce that one big show. And very often, the beginner rosarians do make a mistake when they look at the label and they're ready to buy a repeat-blooming climber, and they think, okay, this is a repeat-blooming climber. It means it's going to look like this, or even better, through the summer all the way to the fall, to the first frost. No, repeat-blooming means that is this big show. My generous garden is already passing its peak, and then your climber will go into a more quieter stage and will produce blooms through the season all the way to the first frost, but again, that first beautiful show is the strongest. And then you will get flowers in the garden, but rambling roses won't have any repeat blooms, even if you will deadhead. My Katrina rose, look at this beautiful thing. When I received this rose, I researched it, and some people were saying it's a repeat bloomer. For me, it's once-blooming rose, so I stopped worrying about this rose. I stopped thinking about deadheading it, that's it. Katrina produces something like this only once a year, and we are done. The difference number two, the size. Most climbing roses barely go above 15 feet high, so majority of them are staying 10, five, six, eight, 11, but nothing more than 15 feet. And most of ramblers can go past 20 feet easily, past 30 feet. So when you go look at this wonderful little rose, a climbing rose in the pot in the nursery, you read the label, and somewhere there it says 20 feet. Know that your rose will eat you, your relatives, and your house for lunch, and will still be hungry. We are talking about the sheer size. Keep that in mind. And from here, we are coming to difference number three, garden design. If you have a garden like me, 1 5th of an acre, I know it looks bigger, but it's not, you probably would want to introduce a climber in your garden. But if you have a sheer space where you can release that climber into the wild and see what it can do near an old shed, or you need to cover a structure, or an old tree to grow into an old, decaying trunk of the tree, then you can allow yourself to have a rambling rose. Difference number four, cane flexibility. Look at my new dawn rose. Somewhat flexible stems, but most climbing roses do have these stiff, strong canes, and they do need strong support to keep them going. Of course, we know that roses don't have tendrils. They need our support to get them tied into the foundation. Well, ramblers are a little bit different. They have these soft canes where you can train them whenever they want, or they can find their way around different plants and foundations thanks to those soft canes. Once the climbing rose stiffens, those canes cannot be moved, so beware. If you have a young little shoot coming out from the base, make sure you push it in the direction you want it to go. Usually, I push those to the front of the rose and let it grow, and then train it horizontally. So that's the difference in cane stiffness. Difference number five, the flower size. Most ramblers, take your breath away with the help of numbers, and majority of climbers, they have individual beauty of the flower. I have in the front, I have Eden rose, and the size of those big blooms. I do like climbers which have big blooms with a lot of petals. Those blooms open up. And here with the Eden rose, it has a darker center which I'm not particularly liking roses, but they are closed, so Eden rose hides that darker center and looks so beautiful and big and lush. My Eden rose is growing in semi-shaped conditions there, and still look how wonderful it is. I can't wait to try to grow Eden rose in full sun and full care and see how it takes off. Difference number six, the pruning style, and this is important. Again, a lot of gardeners do not understand it well. Majority of climbers need to be pruned in spring because they create blooms on a new wood, so there is no danger of cutting off blooms for that season, and most ramblers do create wood on old wood. So what we do in maintenance, how do we maintain the ramblers? We don't vigorously prune them as we do our climbing roses. We kind of leave them alone, occasionally take old dead stems or old stems, and we do it after that first flush of blooms. So our ramblers finished blossoming. We shape them, we cut whatever we don't need, we downsize them or direct them wherever we want them to go. Don't be like me, training my rambler just before it was ready to bloom. Well, again, I neglected that rose. And the climbing roses, the biggest shaping and pruning is at the beginning of spring, so that's a big difference. This difference can cost you blooms for that season because if you will prune the climbers, not climbers, ramblers in spring, you will cut all the blooms off and your rambler will have these little sporadic flowers as my Adelaide Orleans has. The difference number seven, garden style. Climbers do create structure, thanks to their stiff canes. They are more prone to divide rooms, to stiffly climb on the supports. And ramblers, they have that gentle romantic feel to them. They weave through the plants, they weave through the structures, they carve the foundations, the fences, and they have that softer presence. And that's important when you design your garden, right? And then the last difference, number eight, that romance comes at a cost because it is somewhat more difficult to maintain the rambling rose due to its wild nature, right? Especially if the rose is very thorny. Here you have a climbing rose, you establish it on the foundation and that's it. Majority of rambling roses are kind of, I call them free spirits. They grow, they're strong, they want to conquer spaces, and it's hard to maintain them. So romance comes at a cost as when we are talking about rambling roses. So these are eight differences between ramblers and climbing roses. And if you want to know how to prolong the blooms on climbing roses, here's an excellent video because this little maintenance trick will cost you the blooms for the season. It's a very good video. Happy gardening. I will see you in our next video. Enjoy the blooms in your gardens.