Coming up roses
Don’t hold back when pruning your climbing roses, says Monty Don – do it right and they’ll come out blooming
LAST week was big for rose sellers, as apparently more than 13 million roses are imported from all round the world for Valentine’s Day. But this is also a good time for gardeners to plant and prune roses, although I know rose pruning can be intimidating.
Most climbing roses outgrow their space or become intrusive and need to be cut back. These tough plants will survive an argument with a tractor-driven hedge cutter and still come out blooming, so there is little you can do with secateurs that will cause more than very temporary damage to the plant. If you don’t feel confident about your pruning skills, trim the rose back by half with shears and this will buy you a little space and time to observe what it actually does and when it does it.
What we call ‘climbing’ roses actually come in two forms: climbers and ramblers. They can look pretty similar, but there is a crucial difference between them – climbers flower on new growth, and ramblers on last year’s shoots. Leave a climber unpruned and the flowers will get further up the wall, fence or tree it is attached to, and the bare stems that do not carry flowers will get longer. But leave a rambler unpruned and, by and large, it will be smothered with flowers.
If you prune a climber hard today, the resulting new shoots will bear blooms all along their length this summer; but cut a rambler back this weekend and the new growth that appears in spring will not have a single flower.
So, find out whether you have a climber or a rambler. If you know the rose’s name, then look it up. If not, watch for when and how it flowers. Climbers tend to have larger blooms and can repeatedly flower from early summer often right into autumn. Ramblers produce a mass of smaller flowers, but these appear only once – usually from mid-June to July.
Some climbers are modest in growth, reaching a height of only 2.5m to 3.5m, but ramblers are usually very vigorous, with a few – ‘Kiftsgate’, for example – able to smother a house.
Prune climbers at any time between October and March. Establish a permanent framework of between three and seven healthy stems that fan out as horizontally as possible from the base. These shouldn’t cross or rub each other and will need to be fixed to a permanent support. Wires are best, with an adjuster at either end. All side shoots can be shortened to a bud, so that they jut from the framework. These shoots will grow upright and carry flowers.
The time to prune a rambling rose is immediately after flowering, usually mid to late July. Cut away any long shoots you can’t tie in. If you wish to reduce it in size, cut extra big stems right down at the base and take them completely out.
Otherwise, tidy it a little and make sure it’s tied in to its support. I grow my ramblers into trees and barely prune them at all, whereas my climbers are on walls and need hard pruning every year. Ramblers trained over a pergola or arch need almost all the flowering material removed every summer or they’ll get too big.
MONTY’S FAVOURITES
CLIMBERS: Madame Alfred Carrière, New Dawn, Souvenir du Docteur Jamain, Cécile Brunner, Souvenir de la Malmaison, Madame Caroline Testout, Madame Grégoire Staechelin, Zéphirine Drouhin.
RAMBLERS: Wedding Day, Paul’s Himalayan Musk, Rambling Rector, Ethel, Bobbie James, Albéric Barbier, Félicité Perpétue, Princesse Marie Jacques.