Training & Pegging roses part I

Ask 8 out of ten rose lovers what's an important issue regarding growing roses and they'll answer: How do I train climbing roses?

Well I'm gonna explain but I'm gonna extend the group with big shrub roses, Hybrid Perpetuals, Bourbons, Ramblers. Every rose that gets 200 cm or more is better off with training or pegging. It will ensure that your rose will bloom in much more abundance. But let's start with the beginning: Leave your newly planted roses alone for the first two to three years so don't prune at all. These two or three years will alow the roses to make sturdy upright canes which we don't prune. After these two to three years we get into action in February. We'll start with climbers and ramblers against a wall or trellis or fence. If we don't start to train our climbers they will only bloom at the very top of the canes and that's a real neglect of their potential. Every rose cane, long or short has dormant bud eyes but because they don't get sunshine in the right angle they stay dormant. However, when we train the canes as horizontal as possible the sun will reach the eyes and they will start to grow so our canes get several lateral side shoots and all of them will bloom. But it doesn't have to be really horizontally, you can also do circular loops ➿ and it will have the same effect. Most reblooming climbers are climbing Hybrid teas and they are known for their very thick stiff canes. So after our first two or three years the only thing we can do is attach them as horizontal as possible. These canes will get the lateral blooming shoots and the only thing you have to do is prune those lateral canes back to 10cm or 3 inches each February. This is the same for pergolas or arches. But what with ramblers like the Barbier Ramblers: Albertine, Alberic Barbier, François Juranville, Paul Transon, Paul Noël etc ? Well they don't have those very thick canes like the HT climbers. No, their branches are far more flexible and you can easily make loops ➿ with them. You'll see in the pictures how ramblers can be trained even without a wall or trellis. But here are some climbing HT pics after being trained

And now some pictures of flexible ramblers :

So you can see the difference, the ramblers have loops ➿ because they can get bend more easily.

But ramblers can also be trained on a piece of chicken wire or any other structure that's suitable. Look at this: