My experience in attempting to do what you are suggesting is it will only slow them down a little while, and create another "dog leg" in that cane. But, the bottom line is, sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, whether the "experts" suggest not doing it or not. The roses are going to survive the whole process. They may, or may not, look as pretty for a season as you want, but the important issues are securing that fence so it lasts for many years to come and preventing you and anyone else who is cursed to have to work on the fence around your prickly monsters from being eaten and bloodied by them. Just keep the roses out of the way until you can finish the fence, then have fun trying to teach the roses to eat the fence, again. Good luck! Kim

Will do, Kim. It is remarkable how tough roses really are. Once you have been growing them for a while, you realize that. Of course, I live in a mild climate with a very long growing season--that surely helps.

When we had our 3 story house painted we cut down all of the roses which were climbing on it (6 - 3 of which were huge monsters) to about 6-7 feet high. Then we wrapped them in burlap to protect them. The scaffolding was up for 5 weeks. By the end of the 5 weeks most of the roses had put out growth THROUGH the burlap! WIthin 1-2 years the roses were all as big as they had been before, and some of them looked better. So, when you or whoever get ready to stain your fence, you could wrap your roses in burlap - they should do fine that way for 2 months. Just a thought -

Jackie

Great idea, Jackie. They would only need to be wrapped for a few hours! I will try that. It is better than a second pruning, I think.