Iceberg Climbing Rose

If you're looking for a long-lived, flower-happy climbing rose, look no further than Iceberg. This garden favorite has been a common sight in landscapes for years, originally in its bush form and now as a glorious blanket for fences, trellises, arbors, and walls.

Long, arching canes adorn themselves with hundreds of mildly honey-scented white blooms over a long season. Each two-inch flower has a soft pink center that accentuates the snowy white tips of the petals, and the sweet scent is most welcome on a warm summer day or in the vase. Iceberg blooms in waves, so you get weeks of color, followed by a rest, then fresh blooms. The bees won't believe their luck.

Iceberg grows to a mature size of 12 to 14 feet high and 6 feet wide, and since it flowers only on old wood, it will produce more flowers over time, increasing in beauty with each passing year. Bred in England from a German rose, you will find this climber more disease resistant and cold hardy than most others. It's made for tough weather.

One of the most versatile climbing roses, its long canes are flexible and take well to "training." It offers the same dense, attractive foliage of other varieties of Iceberg and flowers at the same time you expect other climbers to, but requires less light than many climbing roses. One of the features that many gardeners take delight in is that its canes "dance" in the wind. Even a light breeze can set them in motion, and if you have a mass planting, it's utterly gorgeous.

Tough, hardworking, and endlessly rewarding, Iceberg has proven to be tolerant of almost any treatment, even downright neglect, and still springs back beautifully. This climbing rose is sure to please.