ROSE PRUNING & DEADHEADING

There is no absolutely correct or incorrect way to prune any rose. So don’t make too big a deal out of it. On the other hand, don’t skip it entirely because every rose needs at least some pruning to maintain a healthy performance and appearance. Just use the proper equipment and follow a few sensible guidelines. But, ultimately, do your pruning when and in a manner that pleases you the most.

Roses with a bud union (grafted or budded onto a different rootstock) can be pruned after one growing season. Roses on their own roots (most Old Garden Roses, miniature roses, and some modern shrub roses) should be in the ground for 2 or 3 seasons before any severe pruning is done.

Use only by-pass or scissors-type hand-pruners (secateurs) for cutting stems and canes up to about ½-inch in diameter. For canes larger than that, use a small handsaw or long-handled, scissors-type loppers or pruning shears.

Always begin by removing entirely any dead canes and dead stubs on live canes. Then clean out weak, spindly growths and enough interior clutter to enable good air circulation.

Any time you prune or trim a live cane or stem by the classical method (and this includes classical methods of deadheading during the flowering season), always try to cut at a 45-degree angle about ¼ inch above a dormant or sprouting bud. In general, select a strong, outward-facing bud so that the new growth will be in a direction away from the center of the plant. Otherwise, feel free to select a bud that will generate new growth in the direction that suits you (and will result in a more shapely plant).  And you can paint the cut ends with diluted white glue, if it makes you feel better.

Deadheading (the removal of spent blossoms) will cause most repeat-flowering roses to bloom more profusely.  But you don't have to make that a laborious, tedious chore, as some insist on doing.  The long-standing rule says to cut the flower stem back to the bud eye of a leaf with 5 leaflets, which is sort of difficult with varieties of roses that have only 3 leaflets or with those that have 7 or 9 or more.  Besides, the Royal National Rose Society of England has found that pinching a spent flower off just below the swollen receptacle at its base is as good a method as any.

And the Royal Horticultural Society agrees.  Jim Gardiner, Curator of the Wisley Gardens of the RHS in Surrey, England, oversees more than 6,000 rose plants, representing 650 species and cultivars.  He says, "We now use the technique of 'snapping off' the flower at the swollen section just below the bloom; this produces more flowers more quickly than other methods previously used."

                                                                                        … Cynthia Dreibak, 1927

This is usually in the second half of February in north central Texas.   After that, roses can be deadheaded and trimmed lightly throughout the flowering season, but not later than a month or six weeks before the first freeze. (Quit no later than the middle of October in north central Texas.)

Prune all once-flowering bushes, shrubs, ramblers and climbers in late spring or early summer, as soon as possible after they finish flowering. Then they will have a long season to develop wood that will bloom the next year. In late winter, these roses can be trained and cleaned up with a light trimming. But, since they will flower on mature wood from the previous summer, as much as feasible needs to be retained.

A Historical Note: You will still hear and read that all bush and shrub roses should be pruned in late winter and that all climbing roses should be pruned only after they've finished blooming.  This qualifies as a gardening myth, dating back to Victorian and Edwardian days when climbing roses were mostly ramblers and a few climbing sports, almost all of which bloomed only once a year.

By the same token, at that same time, almost all the popular bush and shrub-type garden roses were repeat bloomers, at least to some extent.

People who perpetuate this old pruning-time myth just don't know a lot about roses -- or they don't want to take the time and trouble to explain why this rule doesn't work anymore.  And they have problems with what should be simple questions, such as,

"When do I prune my climbing 'Blush Noisette'?  In our garden, it's never without at least a few flowers from early April to the first hard freeze in November or December.  So, do I prune it in December?"

"And when do I prune 'Ispahan,' my damask shrub rose?  In February?  It only blooms once a year -- for three or four weeks in May."

A proper explanation isn't really that difficult.  It's implied in the previous instructions, and here it is in full.

It makes no difference whether a rose is a bush, shrub, rambler, or climber.  Once-blooming roses of all types invariably flower on old wood that matured the previous season.  So, don't cut that wood off until after the roses have bloomed.   Repeat-blooming roses invariably flower (at least to some extent) on new growth produced the current season, so prune them in late winter to stimulate lots of new growth.  If you run into an exception (and a few always exist), prune it solely according to whether it flowers on new wood or old wood.

PRUNING BY TYPE AND HABIT
Roses are officially divided into two general classes: Modern Roses and Old Garden Roses, depending on when a particular class was developed or discovered by the Western World. But pruning methods are more suited to what rosarians casually and informally refer to as "antique-type" roses and "modern" roses.

The term "antique-type" rose has become a very general and all-embracing term that applies to almost any rose not typical of the form and growth habits of the hybrid teas, floribundas, and grandifloras that have become so popular during the past 5 or 6 decades. They may be once-flowering species roses or old European garden roses, such as gallicas, albas, damasks, centiflolias, and moss roses. They may be early repeat-flowering roses, such as chinas and hybrid chinas, bourbons, noisettes, teas, and hybrid perpetuals. Or they may be more recently discovered or developed, repeat-flowering types known generally as shrub roses, such as hybrid rugosas, hybrid musks, David Austin English roses, Buck roses, Meidiland shrub roses, Romantica roses and Simplicity hedge roses.

Generally, the "antique-type" roses are pruned less severely than are the "modern" roses. And the oldest types and those types closest to the character of the original species roses are pruned the lightest. Roses with a habit and form most like the modern hybrid teas, grandifloras, and floribundas are pruned the most severely. But this doesn’t have to be a hard and fast rule.