It might feel counterproductive to hack away at your beloved roses, but hard pruning is an essential gardening task that promotes regrowth and keeps your shrubs looking their best
Pruning roses is one of the most important gardening tasks out there – but many Brits fall for the same myth.
If you want your blooms to return every year and maintain their overall health and vitality, cutting them back is essential. It might slightly counterproductive, but pruning will promote the ‘strongest growth’ and help remove any damaged or diseased wood.
The best time to prune your roses tends to be from late winter to early spring, with the exception off rambling roses which can be cut back in summer – as soon as they have finished flowering. Still, it is sometimes worth waiting until the colder months so you can see exactly what you’re cutting a lot clearly, as they will now be bare.
British horticulturist and TV presenter Monty Don has busted the myth that roses a weak and dainty shrubs that need pruning with specific tools. “There is a lot of mystique about rose pruning, whereas the reality is that they are all tough shrubs that can take a mauling by anything from secateurs to a flail cutter and bounce back,” he wrote last year.
The gardening ace says there are ‘three considerations’ to bear in mind when it comes to pruning – and it all depends on what type of rose you have in the garden. He explains that Hybrid teas, floribunda and Hybrid perpetuals should be pruned hard in spring as they flower on the current season’s wood.
“Remove all weak, damaged or crossing stems first and then prune the remaining stems to form an open bowl of stubby branches,” Monty added. “Don’t worry too much about outward sloping cuts but do always cut just above a bud. Remember to cut the weakest growth hardest.”
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When it comes to shrub roses, these actually need very little pruning and a ‘one over’ with a hedge trimmer should suffice. You can cut this variety back in winter and early spring by ‘removing exceptionally long growth, damaged or crossing branches and then leave it alone’. “There is a strong case for doing this in late summer or early autumn,” Monty said.
True climbers including New Dawn, Albertine, and Dorothy Perkins should be pruned in autumn or winter. “Ideally a third of the plant is removed each year – the oldest, woodiest stems -so that it is constantly renewing itself,” explained Monty. If you have Ramblers in your back garden, you can ease off on the hard pruning and trim them ‘immediately’ after they’ve flowered.
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