I have a horror of hurting the plants I try to grow, so pruning is one of my bugbears. When this time of year creeps up on the calendar, I start looking for urgent activities that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to get around to pruning. This winter, with the long dry spell, I ran out of excuses and had to face the overgrown plants in my yard.
I decided to start with the roses. They may not be able to growl or hiss when you mess up, but at least they scratch, and I could be fairly certain that if I hurt them, they would certainly get their own back. The three roses in my front yard had gotten overgrown and rampant, their centers choked with spindly branches scrambling all over the place, trying unsuccessfully to find light and avoid one another. Those three include two polyanthas (Cécile Brünners) and a more than twenty-year-old grandiflora, who has been here longer than I have. A word about when to prune roses. Timing is important. The ideal time to prune is while the rose is still dormant, typically between late winter and early spring.
I am assured by my confident gardening friends that roses are tough, resilient characters who can withstand a great deal of pruning. After watching the web-based demonstrations and reading and re-reading the available documents on the various UC ANR websites (listed below) I readied myself for pruning by sharpening my bypass pruners, my loppers, and pruning saw. I then got my alcohol and paper towels out to clean everything after sharpening and between each plant. Finally, I got my leather gloves on and stepped outside.
Everything I read advised starting from the ground up, so I got on my knees and began by exploring the floribunda. I could see some obviously dead canes, some that looked fairly dodgy and damaged, many that were crisscrossing through the center and even more that were smaller than a pencil. These were the first ones to remove, in what are called thinning cuts. until somewhere between a third and a half of the growth had been pared away.
To delay the inevitable, I decided to practice my pruning cuts. After clean, sharp tools, the most important part of pruning is the angle and direction of your cut. The final cut must be made at roughly a 45-degree angle, about 1/4″ above the dormant bud or “eye” (a bump under the surface of the stem near a former leaf axil). Taking some old stems from the blackberries I'd been pulling out; I practiced getting a 45-degree angle with the tall side of the cut being a quarter inch above the outward-facing bud I wanted to select. It also served to get the blackberry canes small enough to fit into bins that could be taken to the dump.
After cleaning and sharpening my tools, I began with the dead canes, using the loppers on the larger canes and the bypass pruners on the smaller ones. I sharpened and cleaned my tools again (the dead canes were woody, and who knows what killed them) and started looking for diseased and damaged canes. Those are often blackened, wizened, or clearly damaged. If you're feeling uncertain, you could follow the canes up to the top to see if what looked seedy at the base of the plant is also distressed up above. Diseased canes get removed entirely, cleaning the pruners and loppers after each cut. Damaged canes need to be taken down to where you can see healthy white pith in the center of the cane. I start with the damaged canes first, and then tackle the diseased canes, cleaning my tools after each cut. Next comes the hard part: cutting out healthy canes that aren't where they are supposed to be.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Remember that the purpose of pruning is to remove dead, dying, diseased, flimsy, and poorly placed canes to allow strong healthy canes to
All the rose pruning information you'll read will tell you to thin out the canes that are smaller than a pencil. In case you don't have a pencil handy, that's about a quarter of an inch (7 mm). If you've been avoiding pruning like I have, that's a lot of cuts, but the goal is to be sure air circulates and sunlight can reach all the remaining canes. Apologizing to the thin canes, I cut back the small ones working to get a more open, fan-shaped structure. If you've been brave, that should take care of the thinning cuts, reducing the congestion at the heart of your rose. If you're cowardly, like me, you will have to discipline yourself and repeat the process after you've taken a break and cleaned and sharpened your tools.
Once you've finished the thinning cuts (or have chickened out and left some of the pruning for next year) you clean and sharpen your tools and move on to the heading cuts. Heading cuts are used to reduce the height and alter the shape of the rose. Hybrid teas, grandifloras, and many floribundas benefit from annual pruning to remove much of their top growth. Removing a third to a half of new growth is usually recommended. At this point, you should take a step back and look at the rose, to see where you want to make your heading cuts. This is your chance to reduce its size (if needed) and to shape the rose to fit your garden. Heading cuts are made using the 45-degree angle cut about a quarter of an inch above an outward facing dormant bud or eye.
You need to resist the temptation to leave gangling, weak, and deformed growth from the canes, and cut out the spindly bits and any canes that cross in this upper portion of the rose. You want anything you leave to be bigger in diameter than a pencil (about ¼ inch). Floribundas generally branch more than hybrid tea roses, so you can go a little easier on their smaller branches but don't let your courage fail you at this stage.
The last step is to perform the clean-up tasks required for any pruning exercise. Remove all the leaves and any remaining flowers from the plant and clean the area thoroughly of everything you have removed. Generally, compost piles don't reach high enough temperatures to destroy fungus, insect eggs, and other pathogens that afflict roses, so the cuttings can go to the green waste facility at the dump.
These pruning directions are for hybrid tea, grandiflora, and floribunda roses. Other types of roses require different pruning treatments, such as polyanthas. When it stops raining and I finish pruning the elderly floribunda (yes, I lost my nerve and left bits that should be removed), I am going to tackle the Cécile Brünners. That is assuming my courage holds up and the rains stop before spring.
Pruning Basics
UC Marin Master Gardeners: Pruning Fundamentals
UC Marin Master Gardeners: Pruning Cuts
UC Master Gardener Program Statewide Blog: Pruning Roses and Cultivating Beauty
UC Cooperative Extension Ventura County: Pruning Small Trees and Shrubs
Oregon State University (OSU): Pruning Trees and Shrubs
Pruning and Growing Roses
UC ANR Pest Notes, Publication 7465 Roses: Cultural Practices and Weed Control
UC Master Gardeners of Tulare-Kings Counties: Pruning Climbing Roses and Pruning Floribunda and Polyantha Roses
UC Master Gardeners Statewide: Pruning Roses and Cultivating Beauty
Webinar from OSU: Growing Great Roses!
OSU Pruning roses
American Rose Society Basic Pruning Principles
University of Illinois Extension Rose Types and Pruning