Pruning a Gallica Rose

The old once-blooming roses often boggle the beginner when it comes to pruning. Here we deal with two plants, L'Enchanteresse, a standard old Gallica, and the dwarf Gallica, Burgundian Rose. We also demonstrate two approaches; the meticulous cleanup and pruning, and the rapid buzz cut with limited thinning, the latter which we employ when time is limited and we cannot prune everything in the garden in detail. While some authors suggest that the best time to prune once-bloomers is immediately after they bloom, we have not found that that midsummer pruning is easy to do; when the plants are full of foliage, it can be nearly impossible to see what needs to be removed. Instead we prune all of our once bloomers in the winter, when they cheerfully drop most of their foliage, revealing their stems, and allowing us to easily distinguish the old and exhausted wood from the young canes and suckers which lie just beside.

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