Fathers Love Hybrid Tea is a glorious colour for any garden.
For gardeners who have been itching to get outside and tackle the therapeutic winter job of pruning their roses — you can stop sharpening your secateurs and start pruning.
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After last week’s cold, frosty mornings and a run of cold, cloudy days, roses should now be dormant enough to prune.
Unless pruning is urgent, it is best to wait until roses are fully dormant, as this helps prevent new growth from emerging too early and reduces excessive bleeding from pruning cuts.
There are several benefits to pruning roses hard in winter.
Done well, winter pruning encourages strong, healthy plants and better floral displays throughout the warmer months.
Most modern roses, including Hybrid Tea and Floribunda varieties, flower best on new-season growth.
Pruning them back hard encourages a flush of new basal canes, which produce larger, higher-quality blooms.
Winter pruning also removes old leaves and dead canes where fungal spores and pests can survive through winter.
By cutting out weak, spindly, diseased and crossing growth, and by opening the centre of the bush into a vase shape, you improve sunlight exposure and airflow.
Remove weak, spindly, diseased and crossing growth, and open the centre of the bush into a vase shape to improve sunlight penetration and air circulation.
Photo by
McPherson Media Group
This helps reduce common problems such as black spot and powdery mildew.
If left unpruned, roses can quickly become wild and unruly, with new growth forming on top of old wood and flowers appearing high up and out of reach.
The aim of pruning is to gradually replace older timber with fresh growth from low down near the crown of the plant, ideally renewing the main framework about every three years.
Before you start, make sure you have the right tools.
A good, sharp pair of bypass secateurs is essential.
These have a blade that slides past the anvil, rather than striking down on to it like anvil secateurs.
Your secateurs do not need to be expensive, but they do need to be sharp, clean and well adjusted.
Bypass secateurs are better suited to pruning roses and other soft-tissue plants, as well as younger soft growth on woody plants.
When using them, keep the blade side facing the part of the plant that will remain.
This helps leave a cleaner cut, with any bruising occurring on the piece being removed.
Depending on the age and size of your roses, you may also need a sharp pair of long-handled bypass loppers and a pruning saw.
Old, overgrown roses can be restored by cutting them back hard over several seasons, promoting new growth from the base each year. Pictured is a Cecile Brunner bush rose.
Photo by
Shepparton News
Start by removing about 40 to 50 per cent of the plant’s height without worrying too much about precise cuts.
This first step removes the bulk of the plant so you can clearly see what you are working with.
It also helps prevent the most common pruning mistake: not cutting back hard enough.
Next, look at what remains and identify the strongest, healthiest young stems to carry the plant into the next season.
Remove dead, weak and diseased stems first, then any stems growing across other stems or into the centre of the plant.
Finally, remove older stems and any crowded growth.
You should now be left with the strongest stems on the plant. Choose five or six of these to keep, as they will produce the spring growth.
Prune each remaining stem back to four or five buds above the crown, making the final cut above an outward-facing bud.
Make each cut about the thickness of the stem above the bud.
Cut on an angle, with the bud on the higher side of the cut, so the finished surface sheds water.
When looking for buds, check the leaf scars along the stem.
These are the marks left where leaves were once attached.
At each point you will usually find a primary bud, along with a few secondary buds that can grow if the primary bud is damaged.
New spring growth will come from the top few buds on each stem, while later growth will emerge from lower down near the base of the stems you have kept.
This lower growth will hopefully provide the stems you can use for next year’s framework.
The same general approach can be used for standard roses.
However, climbing and weeping roses are pruned a little differently, so it is best to call into the Garden Centre for a quick run-through before tackling them.
Old, overgrown roses can be cut back hard over several seasons, gradually encouraging new growth lower down each year until the plant is renewed.
Alternatively, you can take advantage of the bare-root rose season and replace an old, gnarly rose with a new improved variety.
If you are planning to do this, get in soon, as the season finishes shortly.
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