Pruning In Pictures :: A Series on Pruning Old and Modern Roses
Large Modern Shrub :: Medium-sized Shrub & making hardwood cuttings :: Damask :: Gallica :: Climbling Arbor
We welcome you to a series of photo-shoots of our winter rose pruning at our gardens in Sebastopol. This series was begun in the winter of 2003 to provide the most straightforward approach we could conceiveof for illustrating what we do when we winter prune our roses. We
think you will find these presentations easy to follow and very informative. Just choose a type of rose you would like to prune and follow our chronological documentation of the process we go through.
Most of the basic techniques apply to any sort of rose. We generally begin by thinning twiggy, old wood from the base of the plant and
move upwards, thinning and opening up the plant. We try to remove older wood only, cutting out stems that have already branched as
much as they can, and have grown thinner in the wood they produce, and less productive of new wood. At the top of the plant we again thin out the dense branching, cutting back to leave relatively strong and new growths which have flowered little. This generally results in lowering the plant height and in opening up the interior of the plant, so that new canes receive more sunlight, giving them a chance to branch and grow. It also results in a plant that retains fewer leaves and twiggy growths which can harbor disease spores that will infect the plant early in Spring. We generally aim to keep our plants as large as we can within the space that has been allotted them in the garden. We believe in the importance of holding on to as much plant mass as possible, keeping a stronger plant that is able to grow vigorously, rapidly in the spring, and be able to fend off stresses. This philosophy we think has been vindicated by the pruning trials performed for over a decade by the Royal National Rose Society in England.
We understand that everyone has their own approach and philosophy to pruning and we do not intend to profess our approach as the only viable one. Simply, we would like to share our experience and approach with others in the hopes it will be found useful. We think you'll also find it far from dull.
We welcome your comments and questions at our nursery email address; info@vintagegardens.com.
Thanks for visiting! -Gregg Lowery & Phillip Robinson
