Thank you Olga for your post. I think I will be following your lead this weekend. I vaguely remember seeing a pic of your Abe Darby pruned so perfectly a while back. If remember it correctly would you happen to still have that pic?

Thanks, Karen.

I have many pictures of AD, not sure which one you remember. I can post one a little later, now in a hurry, have to go to my sister's house in 5 min for her birthday clebration. I would not prune AD now. Modern roses are not that smart and start growing during warm spells. I prune them in March.
Olga

Hm. well it was a while ago and it was just AD in the centre as a very nice up-right well-balanced shrub. Unlike, my baby (as in first few blooms from rooting), at the time which layed on the ground face-down sometimes b/c the stems were too weak to hold up its head. So I thought well "she must know what she's doing" if her's can look that way.

I've since moved away from my AD but I still remember thinking that. :)

I'll only prune my once-bloomers this weekend. :)

Great minds think alike! I pruned my first couple of roses today too. I also planted my last bareroot rose from Pickering today -- Ipsilante, which is one I saw in your garden this May and fell in love with :).

Could be one of these:
Bush shot and buds shot.

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Olga

Lori,
Thanks. Ipsilante is wonderful, but it took it almost three years to start blooming full force. First two springs it was a lot of cane and leaf growing, but very little blooms. And I know it is not just me. My friend in Frederick had the same story with his Ipsilante. Just be patient, it is worth it.
Olga

Olga and Lori,
I'm sooooo glad to hear that it's not too early to start pruning some of these old garden roses...(I've got quite a few now, so I can get a good start on them myself!)

Do you think it's too early to start prunining/shaping/controlling the wichurana ramblers? Some of mine have gotten out of bounds and look as though they're still growing!

Robert

Olga
I was planning on trying this method this winter. But you say not to in colder zones. I never have any die back in spring on my ogr's.(9yrs) I think i still want to prune anyway. What do you think. We are warmer here by the lakes. Z5.

thorn_grower....

Yes! The first picture.

The second pic . . . wow! Look at those buds. Yummmmeeee!

Thanks!

Thorn Grower, I don't know, but if there is usually no dieback, I think you can play with one or two bushes and see for yourself. This way you will get a clear answer for your climate/conditions.
Robert, I have only few wichurana ramblers in my garden. I have little space, as you know, so I HAVE to prune them to keep in boundaries. I don't know if it hurts them but they bloom well for me. It could be that they would be even better w/o winter prunning, but they have no choice :)
Hopefully Lori will give you more scientific advice.
Olga

thorn-grower, here, if I start pruning the once-bloomers now, the cold will cause dieback down the open, freshly cut ends. I rarely do pruning after August, and then only to dead wood, or canes that are going to be a nuisance during the winter. I try to hold off the real pruning until the worst of the winter cold is over. When it looks like we aren't going to go below about 10°F, (-10°C, about) then I'll start pruning if there is little enough snow to be able to see the whole rose.

Robert, when you are talking about wichurana ramblers, do you mean the hardy ones like New Dawn or the Barbier once bloomers that die back if you look at them funny. I'd be careful with the Barbier's for the same reason I put off doing the once-bloomers here. The freshly cut ends just don't have the hardiness of intact canes, and the cold damage can just run right down them.

The best way to deal with Wichurianas is to keep the climber fresh by removing the entire old canes-this is a terrible job if you let them get all tangled up since they tend to be thorny. You want to keep fresh new growth coming from the root-try to remove all 3 year old canes. They are flexible roses so you can take the whole thing down if you havent maintained them. I have pruned the Barbiers in Anne Belovich's garden of climbers several years running. She is particular about how you tie them up.

patricia

Thanks, Patricia. This is very helpful. As fo Barbiers here, I only have Alberic Barbier and there is no cane dieback here, if I prune around now. There is a big diffirence between Mad gallica's zone and our zone and Robert is even more South. I will follow Patricia's advice and take away the entire old canes. I read about this method in the books, but was hesitant to try.
Olga

Re the ramblers - I would add that the ideal time to remove the older, flowered canes is as soon after flowering as possible - in our case, late July/August. The remaining new canes are tied in loosely, kept as upright as possible. This gives them the entire Summer to grow and strengthen and avoids any danger of damage by later pruning, and they are then bent, trained and tied into their final position during the Winter season. We generally try to get the retraining of the ramblers done by Christmas, which gets them out of the way of the forthcoming shrub pruning.

Best wishes
Jon

I am referring to the Barbier style ramblers. None of mine has a cane that is at least 3 years old, so I won't be removing entire canes........yet. I have encountered zero dieback on these roses, perhaps because I am significantly further south and warmer. These roses are as near perfect for me as any rose I can imagine.

Robert

Thanks for your insightful tips. I have a 2 foot high Autumn Damask and Mme. Leveque. They are ~ 1 year+ old from the band stage. They took off with growth after putting them in the ground. They are narrow and lanky in their growth. I assume you let them be for a year or so??

hi, because I'm such a newbie I am trying to understand the thinking behind pruning ideas.

So, is the reason that once bloomer ramblers are pruned after flowering because they bloom on old wood? By pruning right after flowering, the subsequent growth goes through the winter and will be ready to flower then from those buds? Is that right? And is that just with the wichuranias or with the multifloras also?

Olga, then are you saying that the European once bloomers were developed where the winters are much fiercer and so the pruning you're doing (for zones 6 and up) is mimicking what they would have gotten where they were bred or developed?

The part I don't understand is that if the once bloomers do bloom on old wood, then how is it that the blooms develop on buds that are from new wood. Or am I wrong in thinking the European once bloomers bloom on old wood? Or am I just out in the weeds and don't understand anything?

Thanks for any help. or book suggestions. Iknow there are a lot of different ideas as to pruning; I'm just trying to understand why people think as they do about the pruning they do. Or maybe it's just what people have found that works for them on the roses they've grown and watched?

I've struggled with how to prune once-blooming OGRs. I've finally concluded that canes that grow one year will bloom the next. If the canes are shorted, they will bloom from laterals at the top. If they are not shortened, but trained horizontally or allowed to naturally arch, they will grow on laterals along the cane. If they are left uncut and grow fairly straight, you will get growth and bloom right at the top, not a very attractive result. Cut as Olga describes, you get a more shapely and densely flowered plant.

A few years ago, one of the Sheriff's Work Crew cut one of the moss roses off halfway about this time of year. I got him stopped before he whacked all of the canes, but fumed over his "damage." To my chagrin, the canes that he cut had bigger and more flowers than the uncut ones. Hmph. Shows what I know.

Vintage has a good description of pruning different kinds of roses.

Olga, thanks for your very clear, succinct description of your pruning technique - it's pretty much my approach here in Sacramento, too.
Anita

Here is a link that might be useful: Vintage Gardens Pruning Advice

Thank you to all of you. I am such a chicken when it comes to pruning, so not only do I appreciate the theory, but just knowing you are all out there cutting away encourages me. Also, I have put in a lot of once-bloomers this year, so it is good to know what to do with them.

duchesse . . . it is confusing terminology. No roses bloom directly from old wood, but from new, short, flowering wood - laterals as Anita says - which comes from those buds on the previous years wood. The difference with repeat-flowering roses is that they have the ability to also produce laterals from the current years long canes which will also flower later in the same year.

With regard to 'flower power', say a new five foot cane on a shrub or climber has thirty or more buds capable of producing laterals. Only the last six or so are likely to do so, the rest are 'held in reserve' in case of damage and won't flower unless they become the nearest to the end of the cane. Now, it doesn't matter which group of six buds you chose to flower . . . if you prune away the first group, the next are now the ones that will flower. What gardeners have noticed over the centuries, however, is that by pruning to lower, stronger buds you will not only be leaving a stronger, shorter cane more able to support the weight of the huge OGR bloom sprays, but the laterals will produce more flowering buds and the flowers themselves tend to be of better size and quality. You end up with a mass of fat buds as Olga shows, on a self-supporting plant carrying more and larger flowers than had it been left 'large'. (Note also that Olga's example is not a once flowering OGR but a strong, repeating Modern Shrub. Exactly the same principles apply, the only difference is dealing with the second flowering.)

Don't ignore Olga's advice to cut out weak and twiggy growth from OGR's and Modern Shrubs. Let the plant direct all its energy into strong, viable canes, rather than trying to flower on every bud possible. After a few years of this your shrub can be bigger than it would have been had it been left unpruned - but only if you want it to be! I know it seems counter-intuitive at first to make something larger by cutting it down, but 'less' really is 'more'. That is why we do it.

I hope this isn't too basic, but that it helps understanding. It is very simple after a few years :)

Best wishes
Jon

Great thread for us experience-deprived newbies!

Sherry

The old wood, new wood terminology I've read in a number of places confused me. Thank you, Jon, I understand it now. I never doubted Olga's advice, I just didn't understand why it was true. Thanks again, Olga and you too, Anita.

Olga,

Because of our very dry two years, I started pruning very early this year. I got 45 done over the Thanksgiving weekend. Of course, the weather has been the warmest in years and Etoile D'Holland and Don Juan are putting on quite a show right now, as are a number of other roses. I do all the easy ones first, but the large climbers are truely a labor of love. Each one may take 2 or 3 days of backbreaking and neck aching work.
I hope to have it all done by year's end and that includes the apple tree. I can't prune the Japanese maples until February or March, so they can wait.
From now until March is my busiest time in the garden.
We all have our fingers crossed in the Bay ARea or water restrictions will be more stringent next summer.

Carol

Glad to know I can start pruning now. I was going to, but so many of our roses are covered with blooms that I thought I'd wait until they stop blooming, but maybe they never will.... This morning I picked a huge bouquet of long stemmed almost open rose buds from our old hybrid teas - Sutter's Gold, La France, & Chrysler Imperial. Most of my old chinas & teas are blooming, too, especially Safrano, Le Vesuve & Anna Olivier. Even banksie lutea, which usually only booms once starting in Feb, has put out half a dozen flower clusters! Nice to have roses for Christmas! I think I will wait until at least Jan to prune, and then I will have lots of flowers for the house!

Hello there Olga! Thanks for your great advice. I am going to go out and prune my Felicité Parmentier this weekend. That is the only once bloomer (besides Mme. Plantier) that does well for me, and I love it! Thanks again.

Jerome

Thank goodness!!! This thread has been wonderful - I have checked back into it again and again since it started. I won't be facing pruning with my own little roses yet (they're just babies), but it will happen, so I'm trying to learn all I can in advance. I'm going to the first of two pruning clinics at the Sacramento Cemetery Historical Rose Garden this Saturday (there's a second one on Dec. 26 for, I think, climbers. Hoping to do that one as well, although my ever having a climber is unlikely in the extreme). This thread has been so illuminating.
Laura
P.S. Jerome, it's so good to hear from you.

Pruning now may be the way to go in milder climates but when I gardened in zone 4/5 I usually pruned my once bloomes like mad gallica does in NY and pruned in July after they bloomed. I miss these roses down here. They need a dormant period in order to bloom here. Now I enjoy other types of roses that wouldn't survive back up in Wisconsin.

Olga, thanks for starting this very informative thread. i'm in the middle of CT, somewhere on the border of zone 6a and 6b i think. i was planning to prune late in the winter because of concerns about cold winter damage. Strangely enough, while we've had night temps in the 20's for a few weeks now, nearly all my roses still have their leaves on (what is up with that?). In any case, for OGRs that don't sucker like most albas, how do you determine that a cane is too old and needs to be removed all the way to the base? As a general rule (if there is such a thing) how many main/basal canes should there be to keep the rose producing new healthy basal growth and plenty of flowering laterals every year?

Marcarius,
Not all roses shed their leaves. Some, like rugosas, have fall color and shed, but others hang on to the old ones longer. Does not matter if you prune roses that still have leaves on them, as long as you've had some cold periods to stop their active growth like we've had here.

A first-year cane is greenish and has no laterals. The second year it will produce laterals. A cane that is old has more of a greyish/brownish color instead of green and has a lot of laterals. You can spur prune back the laterals for a year or two, but after a couple years the cane is going to be less productive and should be removed.

A lot of times there will appear to be a fair amount of deadwood in a rose in the spring. However, closer inspection will show that a high proportion of that deadwood is laterals from a relatively small number of basals. Those are old basals, and should be removed.

After a while, you'll learn what those look like on the roses you are growing, and can get rid of them a year earlier or so, when they first start deteriorating.

Roses can vary a great deal in variables like how long canes stay productive, how many basals are produced in a normal year - just how big the rose wants to be.

It is wonderful to always learn something new or at least be reminded of something forgotten.

Thanks for this post

Florence/zeffyrose

Sorry, everyone - the second pruning clinic at the Sacramento Historical Rose Garden, mentioned in my above post, is Dec. 27, NOT Dec. 26!
Laura

After twenty years growing roses I still don't know how to prune climbers, but I have figured out once-blooming old roses pretty well and whack into them fearlessly. I'm going to wait until after the new year to start pruning, giving the roses time to settle into their winter rest, and then I'll have three months for long, intimate conversations with my beautiful friends. Olga, thanks for bringing up this topic.

Melissa

I had the pleasure of pruning 'Constance Spry' at Mottisfont today . . .always a challenge and a delight, especially during an Atlantic storm :)

Climbers are the high point of pruning and training, the greatest scope for creating beautiful shapes out of a year's worth of wild growth. In trees, on pillars, stretched across walls - however they are grown they are the most rewarding and the most receptive to sympathetic training. By that I mean always bearing in mind natural, organic, flowing curves and never forcing them into straight lines.

Melissa - I can't see much wrong with your beautiful yellow Tea climbers!

Best wishes
Jon

Here's a picture of my Charles de Mills on the left and Botzaris on the right, it's 2 years old now. Olga, how much pruning would you say on this? Maybe take a foot off of each cane?

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Eric

Eric, I can't somehow see picture well. Do what seems reasonable to you. Cutting 1/3 to 1/2 is usually safe. Take twiggy growth out too.
Olga

Thanks Olga, I'll do that. I definitely want it to be self supporting because this past year both Charles de Mills and Botzaris had their blooms on the ground.

Eric

I hope it's okay to bring this great thread back up. I read it last month but still have a question. Should I prune young roses that were planted last spring and did not yet bloom? I am especially concerned about The Bishop. It grew very tall last year and was so ugly I wanted to rip it out but decided to give it a chance to bloom at least. The canes are very green.

Thanks to everyone for this great information, especially OLGA!

Personally I prefer a light hand with new roses. However if it is that tall taking it down to 4' or so won't hurt it and might even encourage bloom. I've found several of the Austin roses react well to a hard haircut.

Paul

Does anybody have any theories on a possible connection between hard pruning and proliferation? Given the theories between heavy fertilizing, fast growth and proliferation, I've been afraid to do hard pruning on roses like The Bishop that are prone to it for fear of making a bad situation worse.

Mad Gallica, sometimes I think proliferation is mostly rose specific and weather/climate specific. Here in MD I almost never have proliferation on most of my roses including Bishop. However when I lived in CT, I had much more cases of proliferation in my garden. Unfortunately I grew mostly different roses at that time too, so it is hard to say what was the main problem. I did the same pruning and fertilization was not dramatically different, if anything, I use more compost now.
Olga

What a great thread! Most of my babies are too young to really prune, but nice to know that I can take off some of the twiggy growth that doesn't seem to be contributing much.

Thanks for the information!

Several years ago a few of my old roses that just bloom in the spring, were whacked almost to the ground...I was very upset...it happened in October...the following spring, they were covered in blooms!