how to support a massive, massive rose bush, help

happyhero

Hi my mothers friend knows I do a few odd jobs for people and has asked for advice regarding her rose bush. The thing is this rose bush is huge, in fact I don't think I have ever seen anything like it before.

She has a very large garden of an odd shape and has shown it, ie don't know if it ended up in a magazine but she has had days where people come to see it etc, but saying that, she does it all herself apart from a gardener who comes in to cut the grass. There are so many plants and it looks so great I don't know how she manages it.

Ok thats enough of trying to give you the picture. This rose bush is in a large kidney shaped flowerbed with other stuff growing underneath it. It must stretch about 25 or 30 feet across and the trunk/branches are about 4inches thick aprox. at their thickest. As the branches come out of the ground and then bow over it must reach about 8 feet high roughly. When we had bad weather a while back, lots of wind and rain, this bush started to bend lower to the ground, sort of flatening out due to its own weight.

She then called me panicking and I took some rope and pulled several of the numerous branches back toward a big pine type tree to support it. This helped but was not ideal as the branches normally splay out in all directions and there is anothing else to fix to, she has a garage but believe me, it would not take it. I also then tied some of the front branches to the already secured back ones, as I say it all helped but is not ideal, its not looking so natural now and there is a lot of strain going on.

So the question is, how to support this bush,don't say tell her to cut it back as she is proud of it and shows it off and wont cut it back. I don't know if it is a special one that is supposed to be so big or not but it does look impressive.

I am thinking of a pergola as the only answer and several uprights to be able to cope with the strain of this monster, but on looking at pergolas on the net and considering how many days work it will be to dig holes, cement in all the uprights and build the thing etc., it seems that this will easily end up costing her a lot of money, so any ideas, any other ways to support this rose bush monster?

Any help would be appreciated, hope this is in the right place.

tanith

I am no expert but it sounds to me like the whole thing is too big to support itself and has totally overgrown. It obviously not a climber if its been supporting itself for many years and a pergola is really for climbing roses.. I know she doesn't want to hear this but the best thing for it would be a really good prune which would allow the plant to hold its own weight and it would benefit and probably last longer and look prettier when it has recovered..
I do wonder if its just one plant? If its a big as you say(huge) maybe its several that have gotten muddled up together...