Slashing the Roses

This is national rose week, and I was reading that no less a body than the Royal National Rose Society and some of the leading rose growers, are advocating slashing the roses rather than to pruning them in the tried and trusted old-fashioned manner.

I wonder - is this a ploy to sell more roses by shortening the life of the plant, as this is what eventually happens when the slashing program is followed.

Slashing the roses (cutting with a hedge trimmer) will produce more flowers of a lesser quality than ordinary pruning. But do most people want this sort of flower on their roses? This might be suitable for parks departments and the like, but people with ordinary gardens and a few roses do not want a splash of inferior roses for a couple of years and then have to replace their plants.

Why buy a rose like 'Arthur Bell' (floribunda) if you do not want to admire the beautiful, large, almost hybrid tea type blooms, which you will not get if you slash your bushes as suggested by some people who should know better. With some floribundas it might work for a while but I have my doubts.

The whole idea of pruning is to remove the dead and diseased wood and to cut out any crossed branches and give the plant enough room and light to grow in a healthy manner. Slashing off the tops and leaving the dead and diseased wood is asking for trouble. After working with one of the leading and greatest rose men of this century, and chalking up over forty years dealing with roses I cannot under any circumstances advocate the slashing program.

We were always taught to prune hard to promote new and healthy growth and remove all dead and diseased wood, and indeed this has been proved to be correct, as my brother has a rose in his garden which my uncle planted nearly forty years ago.

I am called upon on occasion to prune roses and nearly always they have been neglected for a number of years. Now I will admit they have not been slashed, most of them have not been pruned at all. The result is a few roses at the top of six-foot stems and a tangle of dead wood. A good hard pruning and a feed usually work wonders and produce a nice crop of flowers. What would be the result of slashing is this case?

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