First time poster! I've come across this forum several times in the last several weeks and it looks like a great place!

Last fall we purchased a home and this is our first spring/summer tending to the large yard and gardens. The previous owners were here for almost 30 years and loved to garden but in the last several years their failing health led to a bit of neglect and a lot of plants, mostly roses have gotten out of hand.

Some are staked with rebar or held up with chains and bungee cords and have grown up to the second story. Others have pushed their trellises over. The other day I found one plant...probably 7' tall, almost on the ground. One very large bush fell over this winter blocking the entrance to the house...it had to be cut back, but is blooming like crazy right now.

Earlier in the spring I did a bit of clean up but no harsh pruning. The deer looked after most of the dead heading and I just cut off anything that was black and obviously dead. There are a couple vines that got cut back rather severely before I had a chance to say anything (hubby was a little over zealous about cleaning things up and they were moments away from a meeting with a shovel when I put a ban on killing anything this year!) but they seem to be coming back just great. Since then we've been trying to leave everything to bloom so we can see what we have. At last count, we have at least 130 rose plants/bushes/vines.

Now the back yard is just a jungle and some of the plants don't look as healthy as they should. There are some really beautiful roses out there but now I'm just overwhelmed.

I know there are many different varieties but I don't know a hybrid from a tea...what's the difference? How do I know what I can prune, how harshly, and when to do it? How do I know which ones need to be dead headed and which ones to leave?

I do enjoy working with the roses, but there are only so many hours of daylight...how will I ever tend to all of these plants?

Any advise on where to start will be greatly appreciated!

When I first started gardening, I spent many a winter evening researching plants on the Internet. Take pictures of blooms, and do an image search and compare. You could even post some pictures here and perhaps you will be able to identify some of the roses that way.

Roses are distinguishable by growth habit, bloom color, bloom shape, scent, thorn color & shape, foliage color and shape, etc. Some bloom only once in the spring/early summer, and others are 'remontant' or bloom in several flushes throughtout the growing season.

If you head over to that website, the addy is help me find dot com (typed all together, of course) and you can literally spend hours there browsing, learning, and drooling. If you take pictures for ID purposes and post them here, be sure to include photos of the whole plant, close-ups of the leaves, buds, blooms, etc, and any observations you have made regarding scent or anything else that can help.

Welcome to the forum & way to stoke our rose envy with your 130 roses!

I'll have to post some pictures to stroke that envy a little more :)

I guess I've just been feeling a little impatient now that I've seen some of the blooms. I'm just itching to cut some of these monsters back and give them a fresh start!

I will definitely check out that website...I had tried another one but the search seemed useless to someone like me who didn't know what classification to use - the list to choose from was longer than the alphabet!

The most important thing to look for is to figure out whether s a rose blooms just once for several weeks in the Spring, or re-blooms periodically all Summer and into the Fall. (that's one reason why you should wait before doing anything).

If a rose is growing where it gets sun, and still only blooms in the Spring, then you can cut it back right after it stops blooming. If it blooms all sumer and into the fall, you can cut it back in mid-winter. (If a rose is growing in the shade it might only bloom once in the Spring even though it would bloom all year if it was in the sun - any rose that never gets hardly any sun should be noted for moving to where it would get more sun).

Do try and contact a local rose society - getting someone to come and look at your garden is key. Some of your roses sound as if they might be old garden roses, so I would try and ask someone questions who is familiar with those, not just modern roses (most of which are hybrid teas). You should be able to find them on line by googling.

Waiting is also important so that you can see where there might be Spring or Fall bulbs planted, or other seasonal flowers that may pop up. That is one of the great fun things about inheriting mature gardens - going out in the morning to discover an entirely new plant flowering that you did not even know existed!

Jackie