A question most frequently asked by a prospective rose buyer is - "What sort of climbing rose would you suggest for -" The mind clicks into gear and from the imaginary picture of the situation, several suggestions may be offered and a choice made after considerations of colour, fragrance, and remontancy.

Climbing roses or more specifically, roses suitable for a situation where they may spread outwards are in large demand, but cultivars and their most appropriate application are not so well known.

The purposes for which roses can be used are almost boundless, if the imagination can cope. In particular it is in the area of the so-called “Old fashioned roses” that the vast range of “other” roses are their various habits reside, and it is to this group that people are most referred to seek the “right” rose for their situation.

So what are these situations, and what are some of the cultivars useful for those positions? Have you pillars or freestanding poles where lax-growing Wichuraiana hybrids such as Dorothy Perkins, Excelsa, Albertine, Alberic Barbier and Sanders White can be used? Their long, wiry tendrils can be woven together around and around the pole/pillar, secured at the top, to ultimately tumble back to the ground, rewarding us each year with the most spectacular display, and in the case of Sanders White and Albertine, the most exquisitely sweet fragrance.

For that entrance to the garden or grassed area, and for which you are contemplating an arch. What is best to grow over it to beautify, and disguise the ugly ironwork? Try the moderately climbing Hybrid Tea-shaped New Dawn or Blossomtime. Their dusty-pink blooms are sweetly fragrant. If you prefer the clusters of medium-sized clear salmon-pink blooms, then choose Clair Matin, or the soft-pink thornless Renae. The Hybrid Perpetual shrub Souvenir du Docteur Jamain will comfortably achieve the height, and display its burgundy double blooms of heavy fragrance through the latticework. Just keep tucking the stems in and out of the arch as they grow.

If you have a deck above say, a carport, can you have roses to climb up the deck supports, run along the protective railing, and bedeck it with sweetly smelling decorative blooms? Try Zepherine Drouhin or its “sport” or mutation of softer pink, Kathleen Harrop. How about the climbing Teas Sombreuil or Gloire de Dijon, the latter being the very fragrant buff/pink offspring of the renowned Souvenir de la Malmaison, Sombreuil bearing the most magnificent creamy-white fully double blooms of all. Then there are the wonderful natural climbers, the Noisettes, ranging from the pure white of Lamarque and the blush white of Mme. Alfred Carriere through the lemon yellow of Celine Forestier to the apricot Crepuscule. All beautifully fragrant, free to bloom, and carrying foliage and blooms to the ground.

“What about that ugly brickwork between our ground floor windows - "do I hear you ask?" Consider some of the Bourbons such as Mme. Isaac Periere or its "sport" Mme. Ernst Calvat. Very large double blooms of cerise and dusty-pink respectively. Periere has fragrance of a potency not equalled by many other roses.

There are many roses which if given some assistance up into that tall poplar, cedar, or elm, will reward you each year with festoons of creamy-white single blooms cascading from the branches, and I speak of the Filipes trilogy, the variety “Kiftsgate”, and species R. helenae and R. longicuspis. Being very vigorous, they will disappear up into the tree, given “a leg up” and attention to watering in the first year. Another rose worth trying in this situation is the rampant Hybrid Musk, Frances E. Lester, whose creamy single blooms edged carmine have such a pervading sweet fragrance for a month in December.

An ugly corner in your backyard? Try Sparrieshoop with its 2.4 x 1.8 metre stature and lovely large sprays of fragrant pale-pink blooms with deeper edge betraying its Eglantine background. Altissimo, of slightly large stature, and flowering non-stop November to May with spectacular large single bright crimson blooms, spoiled only by their lack of fragrance. And Dortmund, large bright red single blooms with a hint of a white eye, barely discernible amidst the wavy petals. What rose has more attractive dark glossy green disease-resistant foliage?

And lastly, what about that expanse of lawn dotted with Camellias and Rhododendrons. Consider a rose which will grow up on itself and provide colour at other times of the year while retaining its foliage. Veilchenblau, the violet blooms in enormous panicles, Sea Foam with its continuous display of double creamy-white blooms, and lastly (though there are numerous others), Sinica Alba the Cherokee Rose, or R. laevigata, whose large single white blooms with golden stamens delight in October, and whose three-leafed foliage lasts through Winter.

Space does not permit mention of the host of rose alternatives for all of these situations, but did I hear another question?