When to prune roses: timing and cuts for each type of rose

Timing and severity, rose by rose

The type of rose decides the month, and getting the type wrong is the most frequent pruning mistake. A bush rose cut hard in February flowers well that summer; a rambler cut the same way loses most of the wood it was going to flower on. These timings come from the Royal Horticultural Society's pruning guidance for each group.

Why late winter suits most roses

Bush roses, the smaller polyanthas and repeat flowering shrub roses all carry their flowers on shoots that grow in the same year. Cutting them back just as the buds begin to swell sends all of the spring's growth into a smaller number of strong, well placed stems, and those stems carry the summer's flowers.

The date moves with the weather rather than the calendar. Mid-February suits a mild garden in the south; a frost pocket in the Pennines or a cold Scottish garden is better left until March, when hard frosts are less likely to blacken the soft new shoots that pruning wakes up. A spring that arrives late is a reason to wait a week or two, not a reason to skip the job.

Roses that flower only once, in early summer, work the other way round. Ramblers and old once flowering shrub roses bloom on wood made the previous year, so the time to cut is straight after flowering, which leaves the rest of the summer for replacement stems to grow and ripen.

Making the cut

Every pruning session starts the same way: dead, diseased and damaged wood comes out first, followed by thin, spindly stems and any that cross and rub. What remains is then shortened to the heights in the table.

Each cut goes no more than 5mm above a bud, sloping down and away from it so rain runs off rather than sitting on the bud. Choosing a bud that faces outwards sends the new shoot away from the middle of the plant, which keeps the centre open, lets air move through it and reduces the damp conditions that black spot thrives in. Sharp bypass secateurs give a clean cut; loppers or a pruning saw deal with old, woody stems at the base that secateurs would crush.

Newly planted roses are the one case where harder is better. The RHS advises pruning all newly planted roses hard, apart from climbers and shrub roses, which are left largely alone in their first year so they can build a framework.

Climbers and ramblers are different jobs

Climbers have stiffer stems, larger flowers and usually repeat through summer. Their framework of main stems stays in place for years, tied in as close to horizontal as the wall or fence allows, and pruning in winter is mainly a matter of cutting the sideshoots that flowered back by about two thirds and tying in any strong new stems.

Ramblers grow long, flexible stems and usually flower once, around June, in big clusters of smaller flowers. After flowering, one in three of the oldest stems is cut out at ground level and the sideshoots on the rest are shortened by about two thirds. A rambler that has turned into a tangle can be renovated in late autumn or winter by cutting it down to no more than six young stems, accepting fewer flowers the following summer.

Summer and autumn care

Deadheading through summer, roughly once a week, keeps repeat flowering roses producing new buds instead of setting seed. Roses grown for their autumn hips are the exception, and deadheading stops in midsummer so the last flowers can form them.

In November the RHS suggests shortening tall roses so winter winds do not rock them loose in the soil, which loosens the roots and leaves a hollow round the stem that fills with water. This is a light reduction, not the main prune, which still waits for late winter.

Handing the job to a gardener

Rose pruning is normally done as part of a winter maintenance visit and charged by time, at £25 to £45 an hour across most of the UK. The single most useful thing to tell a gardener is which roses are which, or to ask them to identify each one before starting, because a round that cuts every rose in the garden to the same height in February will cost a rambler its flowers for a year.

A gardener who looks after the borders through the year will also deadhead in summer and feed in spring, and that continuity does more for a rose bed than any single pruning session.