In her weekly newsletter, Growing Wonder with Felicia Alvarez: Simple Tips for Thriving Roses, Gardens & Homes, Felicia offers expert advice to help you cultivate stunning roses, vibrant gardens, and welcoming homes. Each edition features a subscriber-submitted question, where Felicia provides thoughtful answers to your rose, garden, and home-related queries. This Q&A was originally featured as a highlighted question from one of our subscribers, published in the newsletter.
Q: "Can you describe any differences in pruning year 1 vs. subsequent years? Also, we are growing our 25 climbing roses along our deer fence (critical in our area) - anything specific to either climbing roses or pruning for vertical growth would be appreciated."
Submitted by: Alena from Leelanau County, Michigan - Zone 6b, Flower Farmer
A: Hey, Alena!
In the first year, pruning should be minimal to allow climbing roses to establish strong roots. (For more information on pruning hybrid tea, grandiflora, floribunda and English roses you can catch up on
last week's newsletter main feature.) Only remove dead or damaged canes and focus on training rather than cutting, guiding new canes horizontally along the deer fence to encourage lateral shoots and increased flowering.
In subsequent years, removing dead, diseased, or crossing canes while retaining and training the strongest main canes. Lateral branches should be shortened to 4-8 inches to promote blooms, and older, unproductive canes can be replaced every few years to maintain vigor. Since climbing roses bloom more along lateral shoots, training main canes horizontally instead of vertically maximizes flower production. You want to avoid vertical training if you want to have more bloom production. Train the main canes 90 degrees horizontally winding them along the fence. This training will encourage the rose to produce more lateral bloom producing canes.
Using soft ties to secure canes and encouraging new basal growth each year ensures long-term health and abundant flowering. Light summer pruning after the first bloom can further enhance growth and encourage repeat flowering.
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