Roses-2010

[arillady]

Mark,
You might like to try the other two in the trio - Kathleen Harrop which is a lighter pink and Martha which is in between.
I used to err on the side of caution with pruning but after seeing some good results from fairly hard pruning I am starting to swing in that direction. Not that I do any pruning at home.

[zephirine]

Do you think I can cut Zepherine to the ground?

I beg your pardon, Sir?  

 

[Regelian]

Do you think I can cut Zepherine to the ground?

I beg your pardon, Sir?  

Mark,

as you can see, there may be some resistance!  .

If you wish to keep it as a shrub, instead of a climber, than pruning back to a very low ground structure in Winter would push more basal shoots from the graft.  As a climber, I would only remove the old and weak wood, plus take it back to a smaller shape, about half size or less, each season.  A lot depends on how the rose is to perform.  I often grow shrub roses as small climbers, due to general lack of space.  A rose that tends to a bit over a metre as a lax shrub, can often be trained to a 3 metre climber.

[Giles]

Empress Josephine.
Gallicas in evening light (Apologies for wheelie bin and slabs (project in progress))

[arillady]

Giles what a beautiful aspect and the roses look superb against the grey of your stone/rock. Guess they are all budded or it would be a wilderness of suckering roses

[Giles]

Thankyou, Pat.
Yes, budded. Presumably on 'Laxa' rootstock. But they sucker.
They thrive on neglect. No insecticide of fungicide. Thick woodchip mulch, which needs weeding only twice a year. One hard prune in the Autumn, only.
One feed in the Spring. Never watered. 10 years old now.

[mark smyth]

Thanks Pat and Jamie, sorry Zephirine

[arillady]

Giles if you prune in autumn you still get flowers in spring??? I have been told that you should prune springflowerers straight after their blooming or you will not get blooms the next spring.

[Regelian]

Pat,

this is only partly correct.  Yes, the flowers are born on small branchlets that grow from the previous years matured wood, which means you should not cut them to the ground, which was commonly done with florabundas and hybrid teas as they were the were first en vogue.  The once blooming cultivars need this older wood to produce flowers en masse.  I always prune my older cultivars hard after the bloom to encourage a lot of new growth for the next season.  This means I remove the older wood and take them back to a relatively small size, sometimes to the ground, knowing they will now go into a strong growth cycle for the Summer. In Winter, I prune them to shape, but not hard to the ground.  For the continuous bloomers, I tend to wait until  Winter to do the pruning, only removing ungangly branches during the season.

There is no wrong time to prune, other than the Spring, when you would literally remove the flowers on all cultivars.  It is the type of pruning at which season for which cultivar/type that is important.  Indeed, with the palnting Giles has, I would prune after the bloom to encourage lots of new shoots and maybe not prune at all in the Winter.  The mass effect of matured gallicas is simply too wonderfull to tame.  Giles, what is you approach?

Jamie

[Giles]

Oh dear.
I fear you are taking this far too seriously.
It's not a planned pruning schedule, more a case of hacking them back when they look tatty.
I once didn't prune them at all for several years, and the flowers were their best ever.
The back garden has the 'albas', (chlorosis a continual problem on such an alkaline soil):

[arillady]

Giles all my roses are lucky if they ever get any sort of pruning and if I do it is only to get out the older and dead wood as I love to see roses growing as they want.
I have plenty of room to allow this.
Pat

[Giles]

The dry weather has meant little by way of flowers rotting, but the bright sun has badly bleached the darker colours.

[Giles]

'Plenty of room', Pat, must be wonderful, as I never have enough space (or time) for all of the things I want to grow..

[Giles]

..and you realise that all of this is Jamie's fault (  )
Duchesse de Montebello is always my favourite, Cramosie Picotee is a total waste of space.

[mark smyth]

The sun here has ruined all the flowers of my Galway Bay. On Monday it was 26.5 hotter than most countries in Europe