Rosa 'Golden Gate' Climbing Max Rose

The Climbing Max 'Golden Gate' Rose is a superb variety that adds to the available choices in climbing roses. Forming a flowering pyramid from May to October in just a few years, it stands out for its very healthy foliage, vigorous growth, and excellent floribundity, which earned it the prestigious and demanding ADR label awarded in Germany to excellent varieties. Everything is in the nuance of its roses, which are fully double but have a light appearance, an elegant and warm golden yellow colour without being garish, and an astonishing fresh lemon scent. So many qualities combined in one plant are reasons enough to invite it into the garden without hesitation, as long as you like yellow flowers!

The Climbing Max 'Golden Gate' rose represents all the patient work and soulless selection of the Kordes house, renowned for its particularly hardy, floriferous, and disease-resistant creations. The Climbing Max® roses transform the garden into a fabulous floral parade. With their fantastic colours, these versatile climbers are at their best when most long stems are trained horizontally.

Horticulturally speaking, the 'Golden Gate' rose is part of the complex family of cluster-flowered roses. It was bred in 1995 and has also been awarded by the RHS in England, as well as in the Netherlands and Italy. It is a sarmentous rose with exceptional vigour. It has a flexible habit and thorny stems, often reaching heights of 3m (10ft) (sometimes 3.50m (11ft)) with a spread of 1m (3ft), depending on growing conditions. Its deciduous foliage, somewhat glaucous green, is exceptionally healthy and perfectly highlights the gradation of yellow in the flowers, which become a pure yellow shade as they age, slightly lighter. It blooms continuously from May to September, abundantly if it does not lack water. Its large roses, grouped in clusters of 5 to 10 double, slightly fluffy flowers, measuring 8-9 cm (3-4in) in width, are composed of 20 to 39 petals.

Their fragrance, complex, unusual, and captivating, has been described as follows: "the top note initially recalls lime and lemon zest, then freshly picked lemongrass. The heart note evokes an exotic aroma of green banana. Some specimens have a powerful fragrance of tropical flowers. It retains a note of ripe banana that completes its exceptional exotic character".

The Climbing Max roses deserve a wall exposed to the morning sun or a large enough structure to support their shower of flowers. They allow for sumptuous displays throughout the summer and require very little maintenance, except for regular watering in summer during periods of high heat and prolonged drought. Mix or combine them with easy-to-grow large-flowered clematis like 'Etoile Violette' or 'Broughton Star'. They are good companions for phlox, delphiniums, foxgloves, catmints, annual or perennial sweet peas, and morning glories.