How to prune your roses

The head gardener at David Austin told his class of keen rose gardeners that there was no need to be nervous about pruning roses. They are very tough and it was, he said, pretty much impossible to harm them by pruning.

Good to know. Makes me much more relaxed when I look at the jungle that are four rambling roses that need cutting back.

The most inspring part of the lesson was the walk through the extensive rose gardens at David Austin’s in Albrighton, outside Wolverhampton.

This climbing rose will be my guide for how to train my own climber on an arch.

Numerous stems of different lengths are tied to the arch and side-shoots cut to a short length. The aim is that the flowers are distributed evenly along the whole height of the arch.

Climbing roses flower repeatedly thoughout the season. If trained against a wall – see photo at the top – arrange the stems to arch outwards, but not downwards, and tie them in.

They flower more profusely the more horizontal the stem. Each stem will produce many upright shots during the summer. When pruning, cut these back to 5cm length as this is where the next flush of flowers will appear.

Rambling roses flower only once a season. They are very vigorous and should be planted where they can do as they like and do not need to be cut back.

My version is called Rambling Rosie. It turns out it is a repeat-flowering rambler and less vigorous than a normal rambler and should be treated like a climbing rose.

The general principles of this game are:

Prune when the rose is at its most dormant, usually January or February. Do not worry about the weather or a cold front because, as mentioned above, roses are tough.

Pruning is to give the plant the shape you want and to keep it under control.

Remove dead, diseased, damaged and weak stems that are less than pencil thick.

Prune to about knee high, shorter at the front and higher at the back of the bed.

If you have plenty of time, prune to a bud. If not, don’t worry about it.