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Pruning Your Climbing Rose - Part 2

© Mark Whitelaw

This week, we continue our discussion on pruning climbing roses with specifics on just how and when to do that. The first rule is to know which type (or "Class") of rose you have. The second rule is to know what type of garden form you wish to maintain.

On Hybrid Tea climbing roses, we prune the laterals way back - close to the main cane, but not closer than two leaf nodes from the main cane. A leaf node is that pimply-looking, tiny bump on the stem. It is from this node that the bloom stem and foliage will emerge. The reason we prune this far back is because the subsequent stem that emerges can be no larger in diameter than the stem from which it grows. We want our Hybrid Tea blooms to be on long, sturdy bloom stems. So we prune our laterals back as far as we safely can so that the emerging bloom stem will grow as large as it can. What you end up with after your pruning is several long "sticks" spread out with lots of little four-inch long "sticks" growing out of them.

When do we do this pruning of Climbing Hybrid Teas? When you would normally prune your other, shrub-form roses. For me, that's generally late winter/very early spring - just as the nodes are beginning to swell and we can tell whether we have any dieback from the winter.

On climbing roses that bloom in clusters (which include most of the other climbing roses), we don't prune back the laterals quite so drastically (although you can do this if you want to maintain that particular form). In fact, we frequently just clean up the twiggy growth and prune the laterals back to the garden form we want. This may even allow a few tertiary stems to remain on the lateral. The bloom stems will emerge from the nodes on these secondary and tertiary stems. But because the bloom stems are shorter and smaller in diameter than those of the Hybrid Tea and because there are so many blooms, we need the extra support these secondary and tertiary stems will provide.

When do we prune these types of roses? It depends on which type (or Class) of rose you have and whether it will repeat bloom for you.

For Climbing Grandifloras, Climbing Floribundas and repeat-blooming Large Flowered Climbers (those roses that will repeat their bloom or remain in continuous bloom), we prune when we normally prune our shrub-form roses - again, late winter or very early spring.

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