The ten rules for easy pruning of roses

If they’re roses they’ll bloom? If they enjoy several hours of sun, deep earth and abundant air circulation – fundamental needs – these plants will certainly give us great satisfaction and well done pruning can help us keep them healthy.

So how do you prune roses? We asked for advice Marco Sartore, an expert nurseryman from Sanremo, in the fourth generation of a family of rose growers specialized in the cultivation of plants obtained only from cuttings, that is, by burying a branch instead of grafting it onto a wild species, as is usually done. The reason for this unusual choice? “These more natural roses walk on their own legs, that is, they support themselves with their own roots, so there is no risk that our rose will go wild again, as can happen when the rootstock takes over”, explains the expert. “Furthermore, roses born from cuttings, when they age, can be cut at the base to rejuvenate the plant, therefore we are talking about much longer-lived roses”. Great news for anyone who takes cuttings from friends’ gardens.

1. When to prune roses?

“I state that it is about robust plants that can get along well even without pruning, but a cleaning intervention can certainly help and reinvigorate the vegetation, have a harmonious shape and give birth to larger and more numerous flowers“, says Sartore. When to intervene? “Tradition has it that roses are pruned in autumn, but climate change has messed up the rules; once, in October the plants were already at rest, these days they vegetate and flower until December. Today, therefore, we prune at the end of winter, waiting for the risk of frost, because a return of the cold could damage the shoots, stimulated to grow by pruning. To make no mistake, we intervene when the buds are well swollen, but have not yet opened the leaves, therefore from the end of January to the beginning of March, depending on the area we live in”, recommends the rose professional.

2. It is important to disinfect the pruning shears

Before we begin, let’s make sure we have some well sharpened shears (or rose pruning shears) and gods comfortable but sturdy gloves. “If we have more than one plant to take care of, we keep two shears close at hand. Having a pair we can alternate them during work: while we use one, we keep the other at bath in alcohol, and then we invert. By doing so, we will not carry any diseases caused by fungi from one rose to another,” Sartore points out.

3. How to prune the rose?

First of all, we need to know the name of the variety we grow or at least the group it belongs to, because the different types of roses have different needs. For this reason, when we buy a rose it is important to keep thelabel with its name, from which to trace the identikit of the plant through an internet search. If we have an old bush in the garden whose origin we don’t know, we can take a photo of the flower and one of the whole plant and send them to a rose grower – even via social networks – to ask for its name. It is not a trivial detail, because the name of a rose it contains their secrets and makes work much easier, as well as allowing us to discover incredible anecdotes that often lie behind the history of these flowers (The Romance of the Roseby Anna Peyron, Feltrinelli, is a compelling read on the subject).

4. Ancient or modern? Here are the different groups of roses

Simplifying a lot, roses can be divided into a few main groups. “The wild species – or botanical roses – are those already present in nature and generally have a bushy habit, simple flowers with five petals and a single spring bloom. Old roses are those hybridized by man before 1920 and generally have soft colors, not too showy flowers and a fairly natural habit. Furthermore, many of them are not remontant, therefore they only give one flowering in late spring. Modern roses, on the other hand, are the result of hybridizations that have led to very showy and long-lasting flowers and in most cases they are remontant. Between modern rosesthen, we can distinguish garden roses (bush or climbing), those for urban or landscape decoration, with flowers that dominate the foliage with uniform color spots; finally, there are the ground cover varieties, low and compact bushes also suitable for pots and window sills”, sums up the Ligurian rose grower.

5. Prune hedge rose shrubs with a natural habit

“Roses that form a dense and very natural shrub shape, including many botanical roses and quite a few old roses, but also varieties common in hedges such as Chinensis mutabilis, Chinensis sanguinea, Sally Holmes, do not require real pruning, so if we have enough space we can let them grow by removing only the dry branches. If we need to reduce its size, we intervene just enough to bring the bush to the desired shape“, suggests Sartore. This group also includes the wrinkled roses (with precisely wrinkled leaves, very suitable for mountain climates) and the english rosesdetails remontant hybrids “disguised” as old roses, i.e. with very open and perfumed corollas and a slightly nostalgic appearance. Even for them, a light one is enough containment pruning if needed.

6. The tricks for bush roses in four steps

“There pruning of modern bush roses it is done in four steps. First, let’s get rid of the dry or broken branches. Then we cut the slender secondary branches, which may have grown inside the bush in the shade or which appear weak to us. So, let’s sever some of the old and woody branches (the brown ones of more years, which no longer give flowers). Finally, we shorten all the other branches to a height of 20-40 centimeters from the ground, but even more if we want to obtain taller plants”, explains the expert. “The cut must always be done diagonally, inclined at about 45 degrees with respect to the to the branch, so that the rain can flow away from the wound, in the opposite direction from the bud. In practice, we cut off a centimeter above a bud facing the outside of the plant. Therefore, before intervening, let’s make sure that the bud immediately under the cut we are about to make is facing towards the outside of the bush, so that the branch that will be born will have enough light”.

7. How to deal with climbing roses

“The roses we call climbing, from the red ”Edith Piaf” to the rose ”Pierre de Ronsard”, are actually sarmentous plants, that is, they produce long arched branches (the sarmenti) which lean on trees and bushes; it will be up to us to fix these branches to stakes to make them rise in height or to cover a fence. That said, the so-called climbing varieties they need to be pruned very little. First, we remove the dry and very weak branches. After that we eliminate some of the gods entirely more woody stems, brown (this rejuvenation should only be done every three or four years). Finally, if our rose has already reached the desired height, we fold and fix the remaining branches in a horizontal position using elastic ties; in this way, a flower will be born from each of their buds”, assures the nurseryman. “After pruning, our climbing rose should have a fan-shaped appearance“, explains.

8. Landscape Roses and Windowsill Miniatures: The easiest

The landscape roses they are very showy and remontant plants, which have also become fashionable in gardens since we started seeing them in the public flowerbeds of our cities; among the most common are the red ”Sevillana” and the white one ”Iceberg”. How to behave with them? “There is no need to prune landscape roses or even intervene on ground cover roses (including mini windowsill roses), except when it is necessary to contain their size; in this case, we proceed as explained for the bush roses“, says the expert. “For the tree rosesFinally, we do as for the modern bush rosesconsidering only the crown”.

9. After pruning, a disinfectant and a tonic cure

“Immediately after pruning is recommended disinfect plants with a copper-based fungicide, for example a product containing verdigris (it is allowed in organic farming), to be diluted in water according to the instructions on the label and then sprayed well on all the branches; an operation to be performed preferably in the morning. Finally, it’s good fertilize pruned roses with an organic fertilizer in pellets or granules, for example based on guano, to give vigor to the new shoots stimulated by pruning and leaving the winter”.

10. Attention: sometimes a summer cleaning is also necessary

“On modern large-flowered roses, such as ”peace” or ”Black Baccara”, it is very important to remove the dry corollas to stimulate the production of new buds throughout the summer. How you do it? Starting from the flower, look down the stem until you reach the first or second group of leaves made up of five leaflets, then cut the stem by cutting it above that node. If we cut higher up, i.e. above the leaves with three leaflets, new shoots without buds could arise”, specifies Sartore. “If we want to collect roses as cut flowers, we proceed in the same way”. When we speak, however, of botanical species or of ancient roses with many small corollas gathered in bunches, it is useless and counterproductive to eliminate the withered flowers, because they give very beautiful berries (rose hips) which last on the plant all winter.