My ‘Dortmund’ Rose

Well, here is where I lose all credibility as a gardener because I am going to tell you about the most spectacular red climbing rose that I used to grow and you will see how heavy-handed and hard-hearted I am in the garden! I’m talking about ‘Dortmund’ and its bright red, white eyed three inch, flowers. It’s blooms are produced in showy clusters from mid spring until frost. The flowers are only slightly fragrant but ‘Dortmund’ is very floriferous and it’s a vigorous grower.

As long as it is well cared for (or sometimes even if it isn’t) the ‘Dortmund’ rose is very disease-resistant. I always made sure that it got deeply watered every week unless we got a full inch of rain. If absolutely necessary it will tolerate poor soil but don’t shortchange it on sunshine! It needs to be planted where the sun will cast a shadow for at least six hours each day.

I purchased my ‘Dortmund’ roses mail-order from High Country Roses. They were potted and growing on their own roots. This means that they weren’t grafted and consequently they are more hardy. Hybrid roses are often grafted onto the roots of other more vigorous rose plants. I guess that they then grow faster but sometimes the rose from the rootstock will grow up and overtake the selected rose if the gardener does not prune it away. Sometimes gardeners actually discover that the plant from the rootstock is a better, tougher rose than the fussy, disease ridden hybrid!

I grew ‘Dortmund’ in front of my house with one plant growing up each side of the trellis and it was a beautiful sight to see, in full bloom it could stop traffic. I carefully trained the two plants to grow up the trellis by selecting three good healthy canes from each plant that were growing in the right direction and then removing all other canes. This put all the energy from the plant into growing the way that I wanted it to, up and over the trellis. I also removed any branches that shot out in wild directions and I removed spent flowers in order to encourage more blooms.

OK, so back to why I no longer grow the photogenic ‘Dortmund’ on my trellis to the disappointment of myself and my friends and neighbors. This rose was happy and healthy in my garden. I never had to spray it and yet it always had healthy dense foliage. The problem was with the pruning. I loved the rose and I didn’t mind pruning and training it as needed but I had to get up on a ladder because the plant had grown quite tall. My trellis is wobbly so I couldn’t even lean on it as I stretched out to cut the branches and to deadhead the faded blooms. I tried to use a long handled tool to prune but didn’t have the control and I still needed to guide and tie high up canes in any case. As I wrestled with the very well armed (thorny) canes at the top of the trellis it became more and more clear to me that I was going to fall eventually if I persisted. ‘Dortmund’ had to go!

It wasn’t easy battling the two ‘Dortmund’ roses out of my garden. They didn’t go easy and I was exhausted and bleeding when two days later I had finally dug and hacked and chopped at the roots enough to finally pull the roses out of the ground. I am happy to say that one of the plants survived this abuse and is now planted in the garden of my friend. I’m looking forward to seeing ‘Dortmund’ bloom again next spring!