I like to tidy up my roses before the season begins and there are good reasons to do so. You can improve the flowering capacity, remove any stems with disease and make the whole thing look prettier.

I usually start around the end of January, if the weather is fine, with the climbers. I may (or may not) have got around to some autumn pruning so it's a good chance to examine the woody 'framework' of the whole plant. Climbers will flower more prolifically if you can train the stems horizontally or at an angle so if you have a climber against a wall tie the stems down to wires fixed to the wall. I tend to tie in the youngest growth to the top wires and over 3 or 4 years gradually bring them down to the next lowest wire until one year you chop it out completely. This method gets rid of 'apical dominance', in other words the effect of only the topmost buds flowering. And we've all seen 10ft high roses with a few blooms flopping about at the top well out of sight and smell! You may find some branches are surplus to your needs, prune them out. Overcrowding can lead to an increase in rose mildew. If your rose is up a pillar or post don't go straight up with the stems but twine them around the post to achieve an angle of about 45 degrees and increase the display of blooms.

Hybrid Tea and Floribunda bush roses can have a good hard chop back up to about mid-March but bear in mind that the later you prune the later your first flush of blooms will appear. You can take the opportunity with these of removing any dead wood and branches that go in towards the middle of the bush, an open 'cup' shape is what you are aiming for.

There have been suggestions in recent years that roses can be pruned with a hedge trimmer, well, yes, you can I suppose, but having tried this one year I certainly didn't like the effect. The cuts were ragged and the bushes looked very messy. It didn't solve the problem of any dead or diseased wood either. It gets a thumbs down from me!

I like the old fashioned shrub roses and these need a gentle touch in the spring. Mine get a light 'haircut' in autumn to prevent any of them rocking about in the wind so when the spring comes they just get a good look over and removal of any dead wood. Maybe just a light tipping to remove any die-back from over winter. If you hard prune this group you are in danger of loosing any flowers they are going to have as they struggle to build up their stems again. Once in a while they will need a bit of renovation and I do this after flowering by removing some of the oldest wood to encourage new shoots. Think along the lines of 'shrub' rather than 'rose'.

Ramblers should be left alone at this time of year. They should have had all the old growth, which had flowered, pruned out right after flowering. Then you tie in the new growth for the following year. Leave it any later and you get an almighty tangle!

If you make mistakes, don't panic. Roses are very forgiving and any slip of the pruners (and I'm sorry gents, but you do seem to be slightly more enthusiastic in this respect than the ladies) soon grows back and you can have another go at it next year.

By

'er Outdoors