Growing a rose up it..

[Bitstreams]

We want to plant a rose to ramble up the side of the house and have a suitable spot in mind. The house is soft stone and is (now) limewashed. I'm planning to plant the rose in the ground rather than a tub, but with all the work we've done to get the walls dry it seems wrong to water a plant right up against the house. Am I worrying unduly or is this something I should be concerned about ?

S

 

[robgil]

It will be fine. Once established the roots should go to where the moisture is, usually away from the house.

 

[Feltwell]

I wouldn't have thought a rose would do much harm. Far better than the Virginia Creeper, Russian Vine and Ivy we had to contend with when we moved in!

You could always embed a couple of bits of pipe upright next to it and water it through those initially until it is established, if you want to minimise the amount of water and make sure that what you do use goes straight to the roots.

 

[Baron de Gynes]

Be mindful that (and I'm sure that this is quite obvious, but even so here goes) you'll need to limewash the house again. Have you considered how you will paint behind it? I had to paint our house last year (timber framed, black-and-white-) and the huge wisteria growing up one side of the front elevation, and up through the tiles of the roof as well, made it difficult to the point that some rather severe pruning was required. It was during the severe pruning that I severed the main support and the whole plant fell down. It's now being trained along another area of the house which requires slightly less maintenance.

Had the plant not been removed totally, I would not have known the extent of the maintenance required behind it. The wisteria flowered beautifully and so was clearly quite old - according to neighbours it was planted well over 20 years ago. So that part of the house hadn't been painted for about two decades; it showed!

So, while thinking about the perceieved wisdom of not planting adjacent to walls, you might also want to think of future maintenance.

 

[JoceAndChris]

It could be chopped back to half its size, but still, yes, if you're training it on wires it could be very difficult to decorate properly.

I don't think the damp is really a problem if your soil's light but if the soil is heavy clay it might be - roses need a lot of watering in dry weather, especially to begin with.

I've got flowerbeds right up against the house and water copiously when I can, with no ill effects. It's very dry here though - it never rains properly and the soil just drains. Also the bit where most of my watering takes place is considerably below ground floor levels, it would be good to know you aren't watering into a basement for example.

 

[Penners]

Plant the rose a bit away from the wall of the house (say 18in or so), then angle it across to meet the wall (wires, trellis or whatever). This will keep it away from the "rain-shadow" at the foot of the wall. That way you shouldn't have to water it at all, except in unusually dry weather. Mother Nature will do it for you.

But do ensure that it's kept moist until it's established.