It may depend on the rose you're growing. If you grow the old tea roses (not hybrid teas), you'll have a large bush that's covered with leaves and flowers from top to bottom if you live in a warm climate. Many of the floribundas also have good leaf coverage, as do the Austin roses. Hybrid teas are often some of the most unattractive bushes, although some are better than others. It's important to choose varieties that are suited to your climate; if they're happy they'll most likely also be bushy.

What Ingrid said! Hybrid Teas and Climbers tend to get tall and not bushy and they start abandoning the leaves at the bottom to concentrate on sending food up to the tops of the canes for blooms. Floribundas and Shrub roses that stay shorter will keep their bottom leaves longer. OGRs and Austins will depend on how you grow them. If you let them grow freely they'll be bushier and leafier. If you train them to trellises they'll eventually lose their bottom leaves as well as they get taller. Because of space constraints I have most of mine up on trellises and they all get bare legs over time. If you don't like the bareness you can plant something smaller in the front to disguise it. I use minis for mine.

Yes, cut off the tops of the plants. Between apical dominance where sap is pushed to the ends of the canes to produce growth, and the upper portions of the plant shading the lower portions, reducing the available light, hence their ability to produce food, the plants absorb the sap from them and shed them. If the leaf isn't producing food, it isn't needed and the plant drops it. Increase the light to that area of the plant and it will replace that leaf. Isn't that what usually happens when you prune a tall plant, shorter? New growth and foliage are pushed from it lower down the canes. Once they elongate and shade the lower ones sufficiently, the plant begins dropping the lower leaves, leaving you with what you have now. That lower foliage is most often the older foliage, which is also most often more susceptible to disease. Of course, the extent of "bottom baldness" is going to vary depending upon individual rose variety, class type, climate, other resources, disease pressures, etc. Kim

Lavish amounts of water and fertilizer.

Early on, my DH made two comments about Hybrid Tea Roses:

1. "They all look like they've been to military school."

and

2. "They are ugly plants with bare bottoms."

It IS also true of some other sorts of roses -- Hybrid Perpetuals, for one. For those, I look for things like dwarf lavender, to hide their "bare bottoms."

Jeri

Hybrid teas don't have bare bottoms if you prune them severely every spring. You will have foliage everywhere except on whatever cane length you left unpruned. But this will reduce the quantity of bloom somewhat. Also some other types like old teas don't like to be pruned hard.

(Agreeing with Kim's post.)

I (ignorantly) just pruned the bushes that were trying to be NBA stars. Sooooo, I hope what y'all said about pruning the tall tops is correct !!!. I will let you know subsequently.

ak