On Sat, 3 Apr 2004 18:21:33 +0100, "Martin C"
wrote:

We have 2 climbing roses (Handel and Spanish Beauty) which have been
slightly neglected in terms of pruning. Now, all of the new shoots are too
high up and all the flowers appear at the top of the climbers, with next to
nothing lower down.

My question is, can the roses be cut right back (to say half their size),
thereby cutting into the main stems. There ARE some shoots coming out of the
main stems below where we proposed to cut it back, but very few. The Handel
rose, has practically no lateral shoots lower down.

Can the climber be cut almost back to the ground, or would that kill it.

If you look carefully at this time of year and if you're lucky you may
see one or two small red tips of buds starting to grow low down, even
in quite thick old wood. You'd very probably get away with what you're
proposing even without those buds (most times I would just do it but I
can't recommend that without seeing the plants) If you do see those
you will have no problem at all. Otherwise a fail safe way is to do
part of what you want *and* pull the shoots down as near to horizontal
as you can get them - this will very probably force new buds to break
low down the plant, you can then do what pruning you want. You can
help avoid this situation if future by training as much of the main
framework as near to horizontal as you can, even pulling the ends of
some longer ones lower than horizontal. This helps force lateral
breaks along the length of the stems rather than just at the ends. The
sort of shape I like to see is something like a wide fan of parabolic
shoots with variations to taste and space.

Rod

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