Neglected garden and rose pruning

[Penners]

Phew!

We moved to this house last June. It had previously been owned by a divorcing couple - he had moved out about 18 months previously and she, poor thing, had lost heart and lost interest in the place. Very sad.

So the garden, once obviously much loved and very beautiful, has suffered from neglect for at least two, but probably more, years. It's therefore run rather rampant, and we're faced with a spring of hard work to begin the process of disciplining it.

Anyway, I've just been out giving the roses a preliminary prune, and after rummaging around under hedges and within clumps of other stuff I have so far pruned the majority of the 33 roses that I've so far found! :shock: I've been carefully cutting back to outward-facing buds, as I was always taught.

However, (and at long last I'm coming to my question :roll: ) I have heard that this careful bud selection and angle-cutting is actually un-necessary; that roses flourish just as well if you simply hack them back mercilessly with a hedge-trimmer. Has anyone tried this? What do you think?

 

[Lime]

I don't keep roses any more but when living in London I did grow them and they did well on the clay.
I used to prune to outward facing buds but found that they often died back in preference to an inner facing one (or two).
I found it better to let the rose grow slightly so the strongest shoots could be selected bearing in mind to keep the centre open.
Very early spraying for greenfly etc seemed to improve the whole year's growth too.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, I have a glorious image of you now Mr P, with the shears, tending roses for your lovely wife. Please post some pics of the garden!

I've just mercilessly chopped mine to the ground as they all suffered with mould last year despite my spraying against it. I'll let you know what happens in June! Like your garden there are around 30, I planted a lot of Gentle Hermione which is meant to be hardy, and The Fairy, which didn't do so well in a slightly shaded spot, and there's a magnificent Rose of Picardie which was a lot higher than the house last year - I haven't touched that one. The rambling roses with the delicate heart-shaped petals

have been here long time, I'm careful with the pruning of those too.

Mother In Law is a very keen gardener, she's always careful with pruning and feeding, and gets great results - but in the case of unattractive and rampant growth and disease she cuts right back, though occasionally loses more tender varieties.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Sneaks in,
we had two beautiful climbing roses that were all over the back of the house. I spotted caterpillars one summer...............and chopped the whole lot down. I didn't want the horrible grubs crawling in through the windows.

Crawls out.

 

[Moo]

It was either Which? or the RHS (or both) that experimented with the hedge-trimmer approach quite a few years ago.
I remember seeing the results of a trial that demonstrated that the roses didn't seem to care whether they were pruned by hand or mechanically.

ps
I've just googled "Rose pruning with hedge-trimmer" and got pages and pages of results.
Here's a quote from one of the first ones:

"Some of the finest rose beds that I have seen, are cut back by a hedge-trimmer each year; with scant regard as to whether on not the cut is above, below, or indeed through an outward facing bud.
The most important thing to remember, is that you cut your rose bush back hard, to within 30cms of the ground, into year-old green wood, or several-years-old brown wood"

 

[worms]

I remember the sage advice that your worst enemy is the best person to prune your roses.

You might, however want to be careful pruning anything too hard while we are still getting hard frosts (assuming you are still getting hard frosts in the deep south).

 

[Pford75]

We have got progressively harsher with our rose pruning and it seems that the more we butcher them, the better the flowering display. Can't tell if this is coincidence, luck or horticultural skill

 

[Nigel Watts]

Doesnt it depend on the type of rose?

I have a beautiful old rose in my front garden called Tuscany Superb. It has gorgeous deep maroon velvet petals with yellow centres and only flowers once, in June, on second year stems. Cut that back with a hedge trimmer and you will never see a flower.

 

[biffvernon]

There was an experiment on a TV gardening programme a few years ago where they carefully pruned one rosebed like wot yer meant to and trimmed another bed with a chainsaw. A few months later both beds were flowering equally.

 

[Penners]

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. I have no idea what variety the roses are. We fleetingly enjoyed them last year, amid the chaos of setting up home, but after a few months of winter I can't even remember which colours were where. And I didn't think to take photos.

Maybe I should try an experiment like the one Moo mentions - do some the old-fashioned, careful way (in fact, these are already done), and give some the hedgetrimmer hack. If the latter die, then at least I've got someone to blame. :wink:

 

[skier-hughes]

The geese prune ours, problem is they prune them all year long, so we get very few flowers and when I do it's an orange flower instead of the red one I thought I'd bought for Mrs S-H 5 years ago on valentines day just before we moved in

 

[Penners]

Are we then to conclude that a red rose pecked by a goose turns orange? :shock:

I wonder what David Austin would make of that.

 

[skier-hughes]

I think they diddled me....
Gardeners world tonight 8.30pm roses. enjoy

 

[Penners]

Thanks, Graham. I'll be sure to watch it.

I must add, however, that I find today's GW shallow and thoroughly dumbed-down. Let's hope that the anodyne Toby Wossname does an uncharacteristically in-depth job, tonight.