I have what seems to be a very old rosebush outside of my place. I'd like to prune it, make it look presentable; right now, it's horrid. :o(

I don't know where to start, though I've seen tons of videos, one of which was very clear and helpful, but not enough. The problem I think is that the bush seems to be very old. Because of that, I am having a hard time figuring out which canes are dad and need to be pruned.

I've attached some photos with numbers on them and arrows that point to canes or parts of the rose plant I have questions about or don't know whether or not to trim off.

Please help. :( It seems as if most of the canes are either brown or grayed from age. Which canes do I remove?

We'd like to keep it as compact as possible, and only wanted a few canes.

Image 1
http://tinypic.com/r/2ij3wxx/5

Image 2
http://tinypic.com/r/2rgp5jt/5

Image 3
http://tinypic.com/r/zvvocl/5

New growth will first appear as small purple bumps that become spikes, then elongate into green shoots with leaves. They will appear at the upper end of shoots or on cane sections that are nearly horizontal. These will tell you which canes are alive, but another test is to clip back and check for a ring of green inner bark, which means the cane is alive.

New canes stay green for one or two seasons, then apparently on this variety turn brown, and finally gray after several years.

Your first goal should be to remove about half of the canes, the oldest gray ones, right at the base, perhaps using a keyhole saw. You hope to force new basal shoots to emerge from the enlarged base, which may be a graft. However, sometimes very old roses don't want to produce new basals. For that reason I wouldn't remove more than half in one year.

You want to preserve the green canes that start at or near the base. However, the yellowish-green cane with purple blotches looks unhealthy. Cut off thin, spindly branches and crossing canes that clutter.

Without knowing the rose, I hesitate to advise a substantial overall cutback, but people often take shrub roses back by 30%. You could start by just thinning and show us a picture of what's happening this summer.

Can you describe the flower and habit of bloom? Also say what state you live in.

The best way to tell if a cane is dead or not is to start snipping small pieces off from the top down. If the inside of the cane is white (sometimes with a green cast) or cream it's living. If it's dark tan or brown it's probably a dead cane to that point. Keep clipping down in small amounts until you come to that white center called the pith. Make your cuts about a quarter inch above one of the little nodes (bud eyes) on the sides of the canes.

Some general rules of thumb for pruning. These procedures are for a lot of types of roses but not all of them.

You can take out dead wood at any time.
You can take out crossing or rubbing canes.
You can remove canes that are growing inward to open the center up.
Remove any canes smaller than a pencil in diameter.
It's usually best to cut above an outward facing bud eye at about a 45 degree angle to allow water to run off the cut.
Seal any cuts larger than a pencil with glue or nail polish to keep out borers.

On older roses and climbers you can thin out some of the oldest canes out down to the bottom too. Never cut more than about a third of the oldest canes in any given year though. Cutting out some of the oldest wood should encourage the rose to send up new growth from the bottom to renew the plant.

In picture #1 Everything you have labeled looks like it has green canes coming from them so I'd say those are alive.

In picture #2 you can cut off a lot of those smaller twiggy canes on the inside to open up the center and allow better air circulations. BUT, since we don't know what kind of rose this is you shouldn't cut all that off yet. Some old garden roses only bloom on last year's canes and they like to get all that twiggy growth. So if you cut it all off and that's the kind of rose you're dealing with you could lose a lot of bloom.

In picture #3 that looks like a very healthy rose bush and perhaps some type of climber, it's hard to tell. I would thin it out a little this year and wait for it to bloom so we can try and make some kind of ID on it before you do any more heavy pruning. We may not be able to give you a specific name but we can probably at least ID what type of rose it is so we can give you better direction on how to care for it.

What happens to rose canes that have no buds on them, only thorns? Can I remove those? I know it's hard to answer without knowing what kind of rose exactly these are, but we didn't plant these and only saw them bloom once, pink, shaped like a typical red rose. I actually went out and tried to trim the twiggy canes, but some of them have leafy buds on them. Does trimming off the twiggy ones mean that there won't be any buds or blooms in the area in which the twiggy cane was cut? :ol

It's not uncommon for climbers to have no buds on the canes at the bottom but if you follow the cane up to the top you'll see that at some point those buds will start up again. It takes a lot of energy to send food up to those tall canes so the rose doesn't waste it on the bottom where there are no blooms. It's what we call "bare knees" on climbers. You can plant something shorter in the front to hide that if you like but make sure it's something that has shallow roots so it doesn't compete with the rose for food and water.

If you want to encourage more blooms try and spread the canes at the top out so they are more horizontal. Doing this will encourage more side branches called laterals and each lateral will give you a bloom. The more laterals you can encourage the more blooms you'll have.

Short of cutting it all off to the ground, on most modern climbers you really can't hurt them by pruning them. Just clean it up and prune it to the general shape you want and see how it grows. Remember that pruning encourages growth so don't be surprised if it takes off and grows even bigger after you prune it! After it blooms you can reshape the rose again when you cut the dead blooms off (dead heading). Use this year to experiment, observe and learn how the rose likes to grow so next spring you'll have a better idea of how you want to prune it. Every rose has it's own growth habit and you need to figure out what this one likes to do and work with it.

And first and foremost, RELAX and ENJOY your lovely rose! It's really not rocket science, there's no great mystery to it, and roses aren't nearly as hard to grow as people make them out to be. If you've grown any kind of perennials or shrubs before roses are very similar and have the same basic needs, sun, water, food and a trim now and then.

Again, I recommend that you remove some of the oldest canes at the base.

The type of flower form found on florist roses is known to rose people as "hybrid tea form." As Seil says, some climbers have flowers with hybrid tea form.