Iceberg rose

[MerylSqueak]

My 2 year old climbing iceberg has taken off massively this year . It's great. Except for the fact that now it only has foliage and flowers from about 5 feet up. Is there anything I can do for next year for it to be more than canes at the bottom. The bottom part is in a shady spot. I'm not sure if this is the cause or not.

Did you cut any of it back to the ground? I’ve a feeling I remember Charlie dimmock saying to cut a third of it back so you don’t end up with flowers all at the top. Mine isn’t that tall as yet but I still have loads of flowers, I’m planning to cut a third back & I’m hoping I haven’t misremembered her saying that!

I didn't cut it back last year because it was new in ( and I don't really know what I am doing). Oh dear.

I have climbing iceberg too. Please don’t cut to the ground- they need to climb! I think the advice may have been for a bush rose rather than a climber! It’s all about twining it around the post or if it’s a trellis training it along. The point is the stems should be horizontal to 45degrees to produce the flower spurs. You can prune but don’t cut back the leading stems. There’s some excellent YouTube’s on how to pillar a rose. I would think from your post that you left it to it’s own devices so it would grow straight up - that means only flowers at the top.

Not Iceberg obviously but this is trained on horizontal wires about 12 inches apart to get those stems at that 45 to 90 degree angle. If the stems are too long for the space once you’ve tied them in the you can cut off the excess. If you have a lot of stems then some can by cut shorter which helps get some flowers lower down.
I would leave it until January/February to do this. It’s probably been good for the rose to let it grow and get established this year as you now have some nice stems to work with.

Thank you. That makes sense. I'll do that in January.