Emsie, that is a beautiful rose. Don't be intimidated. You see the cane that is arching out to the right and has little stems coming up from it and those have flowers? That is what you want. A climber needs to be horizontal at some point and then each bud on the cane (which is what a rose branch is called) will put out a flower. If the canes are straight up, you will just get a tall rose with some flowers on top.

You don't have to wait till winter to clean up this rose. When the blooms are gone, you want to go to each little stem that had a rose on it and cut it back. Leave about 6 inches, or two sets of leaves. Also cut off anything that is black or brown or looks broken. Any ugly scraggly growth you don't like you can get rid of.

The really tall canes on the top of the trellis, you should try to see if you can gently bend them down to be horizontal. They will then have flowers come up all along them instead of just at the top.

The harder part, which you may want to wait till winter, is the bottom. It's hard to tell, but it looks like you have a lot of canes popping up from the ground. Any that are dead, or short or crossing another cane, you will want to remove.

Also, after pruning, you will want to fertilize the rose. Rose Tone is a good general organic rose fertilizer that is available at Home Depot. If you don't get regular rain, you will also want to water it.

The great thing about roses is that they respond very well to being cut back. Don't be surprised if you do just a little bit the rose will put out a lot of new growth and look just beautiful.

Good luck.

While I do not disagree with Buford, I would use another approach on this starving rose. Probably not enough sun? I would cut it all down to about 12" from the ground to concentrate the strength to the roots.I would clean it up good, pruning old wood, as Buford suggests. As the new growth comes up to the trellis tie him to it with twine. It is very difficult to train thorny stems in a horizontal plane and I never was satisfied with my attempts. I tie new stems and retie if adjustments are needed year to year. As mine got longer they set out enough new growth from the canes that cover the trellis. Maybe this works ok for my roses which are tough once bloomers. I'm thinking you may have a John Cabot like mine.

No WAY I would cut that whole plant down to 12-ins.! Not unless I wanted to lose it. I'd follow Buford's advice on this!

Jeri

Buford and Jerijen: Wow, thanks so much for the good advice and encouragement! I feel alot better now about pruning this beauty. The only question I have is about cutting out dead canes: It was probably hard for you to tell from the picture but in order to cut the dead canes out the two blooming canes must go, as I'm pretty sure they originate on those ugly grey trunks. Do I just cut off those whole things to the ground and hope that the other (very few) smaller canes will step it up? or do I cut the silver-greys back to where the blooming canes start?

There are also LOTS of canes with no leaves on them (you can see some on the top left, more near that horizontal long cane on the right). Should those all be cut off too, because of disease?

Johnny Cabot: I like your suggestion about cutting it down severely and starting over, but I think my grandma would freak if I did that! It almost feels like the only option though because like I mentioned above, most of the growth is off of those old grey canes. Maybe I'll do the 'cut by 1/2' thing and hope for the best.

By the way, beautiful rose! I'm very envious....How do you get so many blooms without horizontal canes? If I read right you don't really prune it? I'm pretty sure my rose is not a John Cabot though, as it blooms throughout the summer (according to my grandma) and has very few thorns. It is also more red and darker than yours, a cerise type color. I appreciate your trying to identify it though, I'm curious as well. I posted in the other forum (see the link below) more pictures that might help if you want to figure it out. My best guess is a red excelsa/red dorothy perkins. They fit the time frame and are the same color haha.

Here is a link that might be useful: Identify this Rose!

Oh my, don't worry about those "ugly grey trunks." That's what you get on an old climber. Please follow Buford's advice. As a lover of climbers, I often see my new growth coming off of those old grey trunks. Please be gentle with this rose. It looks like it just needs fertilizing, training (canes tied down), and weeding.

besides what buford said, I would clear away any other plants growing within about 2' of that rose. Roses don't compete well with other plants.

How much direct sun does it get? Is there a nearby tree that needs to be trimmed to give the rose more sun? 6 hrs a day of direct sun is good.

"It was probably hard for you to tell from the picture but in order to cut the dead canes out the two blooming canes must go, as I'm pretty sure they originate on those ugly grey trunks. Do I just cut off those whole things to the ground and hope that the other (very few) smaller canes will step it up? or do I cut the silver-greys back to where the blooming canes start?"

*** I'd love to see a photo of that part of the plant, but without that, I would agree with Bonny46.

Cut away dead growth . . . but go carefully, making sure that good green growth is not coming out of it at some point.

This old beauty hasn't had much care of late -- don't shock it by removing too much at once. I HAVE seen very old roses fail to survive that sort of a shock.

And yes. Some feeding would be welcome. Some good mulch, too. :-)

Jeri

Emsie; I do prune a lot, the side shoots make lots of new buds which I have to groom continually to keep out of my face and enable to pass thru. We use this entrance daily. I prune hard to give my roses a "kick in the pants" when they get sluggish on bloom. That is just my technique. My zone and probably my roses very different from yours. My approach may seem harsh to others but as Buford suggests roses like to be pruned and mine come back beautifully. Actually my John Davis looked pathetic last summer but with severe pruning came back in glory this year. The best advice seems to be under your circumstances to start conservatively and see what results you get. I love the tough old roses they are the workhorses of my garden, your grandmas rose just reminded me of mine.

hoovb & johnnycabot: now that you mention the sun issue there is a HUGE lilac on the south side of this rose that didn't used to be there...

Jerijen: Here are a few close ups I took but its still pretty difficult to see what's going on with all the canes and trellis and everything. These pics do show the leafless canes I was talking about though.

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Hi Emsie, If the canes are brown on the bottom, but still green and blooming on top, you should keep those. Only cut out the canes that are dead all the way up.

I'm not sure what zone you are in, but it could be that the rose suffered from black spot and that's why you don't have any leaves. Some of my climbers get like that if I don't spray them. But if you do trim back some of the tips, they will put out new leaves.

You can also try to trim back the lilac so the rose gets more sun.

Buford said it before I did.

Cut away anything that is dead from top-to-bottom.
Keep what still has green coming from it.

What I personally would do with this rose is sit on the ground and follow each of those short canes from the bottom to the top. If they're dead the whole way, remove them as far down as you can. If they're growing something, leave them be.

Once all the truly dead stuff is gone, you can see better.

Jeri