Plant Care

All the plants you have in your garden and also inside the house, should be cared for correctly. This will ensure you get the best displays and long-life from them.

Pruning

Pruning Climbing Roses

A climbing rose can soon outgrow its support, so regular pruning is required. If left to outgrow, the result is a display of flowers way out of sight at the top of the plant and the lower stems which become bare and woody.

The best time to start pruning climbing roses is during the winter months. This will help to provide an abundance of blooms the following spring.

Pruning Tips

Wash any cutting blades in diluted garden disinfectant after use, particularly when diseased wood is cut. This is to prevent the spread of diseases from plant to plant.

When pruning healthy wood, make an angled cut using bypass secateurs. Cut close to a healthy bud, sloping away from it.

If you are planting a new climbing rose, remember that they are usually sold with longer stems than most other roses. These should not be pruned in the first year because, along with the shoots they produce, they are needed to form the framework of the climber in the coming year.

Dead or diseased stems

Remove any dead or diseased wood with a pair of bypass secateurs. Make a sloping cut into healthy wood, close to a bud or shoot. This allows water to run away from the bud that would otherwise encourage disease. Crossing and rubbing stems should also be removed to prevent the possible spread of disease.

Older plants

On older climbers, which may be overgrown, you may need to carry out more drastic pruning. This is called renewal pruning. It involves removing one of the oldest and unproductive main stems each year, promoting new shoots to grow in their place, and so preventing the whole plant getting old and woody. Make cuts close to ground level or back to a healthy shoot, using a pair of loppers or a pruning saw.

Using the secateurs, reduce all flowered sideshoots by about two-thirds of their length, cutting just above a healthy shoot or bud. The direction the bud is pointing indicates the direction in which the new shoot will grow.