Climbing roses can cover a lot of ground, literally. With only an acre and a half—but a couple of thousand different plants to squeeze into it—I don't have room for big roses to do their groundcover thing.

So I train them up instead. Up a pole, up a galvanized-pipe frame. Up a pole into a tree. Up,up, up.

I've posted often on Eddie's Jewel and Alister Stella Gray, and I've introduced Darlow's Enigma, Lawrence Johnston, and Dortmund. Sanders White, Rambling Rector, Kiftsgate, New Dawn, and Golden Showers are a few of the biggies that will pop up here next.

But what happens if the big-big-big, up-up-up rose isn't hardy here? I can't be dragging a thorny monster with twenty-foot canes down into the basement each Fall. The short answer is that I should be so lucky as to have a huge rose that's not hardy. I'm growing two of them in pots so far, and they aren't big or monstrous at all. Pokey, pokey, pokey. I'm patient, patient, and more patient.

This is La Mertola. The seven-leaflet blue leaves are, honestly, only a bit juiced up in the morning dew.

This really is a rose to grow for foliage as much as flower.

Not a lot of thorns, but, as usual with climbers, they have a piercingly-effective downward hook.

In a milder climate—this is at the nursery that sells them (thank you, Rose-Roses, for posting)—La Mortola eats trees for breakfast.
I understand that "La Mortola" itself is a grand villa in Italy, with the eponymous rose trained far and wide across the glorious stonework. Ah, the delights as well as terrors of Big Roses On The March In Easy Climates.

But growing a rose in a pot, not in the ground, is (apparently) just this side of turning it into bonsai.

Only this year, it's third, is my own La Mortola giving any sign of the quick and far-reaching growth it prefers to put out in California or along the Mediterranean.

I'm putting aside the possibility that this is more personal, or a least specific: Maybe La Mortola doesn't like to sit, leafless and dormant and the dark, in a chilly damp basement from November into May? Or in my chilly and damp basement? Or maybe it doesn't like the high humidity of an East Coast Summer?

Or maybe La Mortola would be bounding about more if I would just repot it more often. What a concept: Just do the normal basic things to keep a plant happy.

OK, I'm on it: La Mortola in a grand, even estate-sized pot in 2011. And then maybe I'll start getting clusters of its gentle white flowers too.Thank you, Roseraie de Berty, for the luscious flower shot.

Assuming my La Mortola finally does reveal its Inner Monsterhood—yes, in a pot all the while—how will I keep it in bounds? Probably the only option is to tie it loosely up a stake, into a Big Blue Cylinder. With heads of charming white flowers in June.

What's a little dragging in and out of the basement?