The Art Of Rose Pruning - Keep Your Rose Garden Articles | Garden Information Center

To keep your rose garden looking beautiful your roses need regular trimming and deadheading. These are very important parts of your rose care routine. People differ in their opinion about when and how to do these tasks.

Individual rosarians already have their favorite tried and tested methods. This article is meant only for new rosarians. Here are some guidelines for the newcomers about where to start.

Once you start you will gradually learn by yourself where to make changes and also invent some new techniques of your own. You are welcome to use your own method as long as it doesn't kill your roses or damage the rose bush.

Rose pruning isn't as difficult as people generally think. There are only four basic rules and some common sense that is required. If you can follow these basic rules you'll achieve fabulous results. Beautiful rose bushes, reflecting your caring touch, will welcome you whenever you set foot in your garden.

First of all you have to keep the center of your bushes free of growth. This will keep the bush insect free and allows good air circulation which is necessary to keep down occurrences of fungus infection. The next rule is to remove any dead or rotten growth including the withered blooms (this is called “deadheading”). By pruning this unwanted growth your bushes will not only look neat but disease and insects will keep their distance from your precious roses.

Another tenet that you must follow is to carefully shape your rose bushes as they grow. This is necessary to add symmetry to your garden. Shaping will magically change your bushes from wild and messy to neat and respectable, a look that will make people envious of your gorgeous roses. The last rule is to remove branches that cross over in order to promote stronger growth.

Pruning shears must be kept sharp and clean. You have to clean the pruners every time after use to remove any disease or fungus infection. To keep out disease close up the pruning cuts you've made in your rose bushes. You can use Elmer's glue which works just fine and is much less expensive than any other commercial preparation.

Now let’s discuss some common pruning terms and techniques as well as some guidelines. You can choose which one is necessary for your variety of rose.
The first is hard or low pruning. Be ruthless with your pruning – starting from the base or bud union, cut the canes on an angle just above the third or fourth bud. The aim is to have healthy main canes about four and a half inches long.

Use this pruning technique with new hybrid tea, grandiflora, and floribunda varieties to stimulate their growth. Don’t do hard pruning with established bushes because they may not revive. This should be done only as one last effort to revive sick or neglected bushes.

In case of fair or medium pruning you have to cut strong canes back to approximately half of their length. But sometimes if the stems are weaker you can cut back even more severely. This technique works well for established gardens containing floribundas, hybrid teas, grandifloras, and standard tree roses.

In light pruning, you cut off only the top 1/3 of the canes. After pruning you should remove all unwanted wood and ‘tip’ the remaining stems by just cutting the very tip off. Light pruning is not usually recommended because the bush blooms too early and produces poorly developed flowers. Only use this technique if the usual pruning methods are not working and the plant looks like it won’t survive.