Your "Rambling Rector" will certainly pay back the neighbours for their Leylandii! We planted one to ramble over the pergola, which it did with great enthusiasm, so well that the weight of it brought down one section of it. It is a lovely rose, with a beautiful scent that can be smelt from the house, but it needs a firm hand. We cut it right down to the roots hoping to get rid of it completely, but it put up even more shoots from the inch that was left showing above ground. It has now been doused with weed-killer - hoping that does for it.
Ideally, you need to cut right out the shoots after they have flowered each year, leaving the new growth that will flower the next year. It only flowers once a year and spends the rest of its time gaining strength.
It is an old variety, on its own root, not a hybrid, so it comes true from seedlings. Ours had three offspring. One was given away, one planted where it was supposed to be under control (but I can't get to it without mountaneering on the rockery and I have gone off that) The third was a thin weedy-looking specimen that I thought would never thrive, so I shoved it into the ground in an odd corner and forgot it for a couple of years. When I next looked it was ten feet high with stems arching out six feet or more, bearing fragrant flowers and ferocious thorns.
Think "Kiftsgate"!
