Pruning Climbing Roses :: Rose Pruning Tips

Climbing Rose 'Gold Bunny' is a profilific flowering rose when pruned correctly. Using Rose ties to stainless steel wire supports make training and pruning climbing roses much easier. Rose ties can easily be adjusted as required.

Why Prune Climbing Roses?

Climbing Roses will keep growing (and flowering) if they are not pruned, so why prune a climbing roses at all?

The simple answer is that unpruned roses will not flower as much as pruned roses. Secondly unpruned climbing roses tend to lose shape and become a little untidy. Left unpruned the job of pruning a climbing rose can be a big task.

Pruning a Climbing Rose basic information.

The essential tools are a pair of good quality, clean sharp secateurs, a good pruning saw or pair of loppers is also advisable.

• Why clean? to prevent disease.
• Why sharp? So that cuts are clean
• Why good quality? A good quality pair of secateurs will be easier to keep sharp and will last a lot longer than a cheap pair.

Basic elements of pruning a climbing rose.

• All Climbing roses flower best on growth that was produced during the previous growing season.
• Climbing roses will flower more prolifically on horizontal growth than vertical growth.

So what we are trying to do is to encourage new growth, but not remove all of last years growth, and to prune so that we have horizontal growth. This will require training, as well as pruning.

Newly planted climbing roses need very little pruning, they should be dead headed and trained so that horizontal growth is encouraged, this is the case for two - three years.

How to prune an established climbing rose.

• Prune climbing roses after the last flowers have faded, late autumn or early winter.
Remove any suckers from below the graft. Remove any dead or really old wood. Cut back main stems to 5 or 6 but try not to prune the remaining canes to hard if at all. Remove the oldest ones. In general cut back other growth by about 1/3. Secure new growth to the support frame with rose ties, NOT by weaving the stems through a trellis. Weaving any climbing plant through a trellis or similar structure make future pruning much more difficult. Fertilize and mulch after pruning for a flying start to the next flowering season.

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