Instructions For Pruning Roses

Trimming Rose Bushes

How and when to prune rose bushes is a mystery to a lot of confused gardeners.

These simple pruning steps should help you trim roses with confidence.

Pruning Miniature Roses, Climbing Roses, Standard Roses, Wild Roses and Landscape Roses, such as the self- cleaning Carpet Roses and Knockout Roses, as well as all the Once-blooming Roses, is a bit different.

Their special pruning needs should be followed if you want the rose to produce flowers every season.

On the pages about these roses, I write about how to prune these special roses.

So if you don't know how and when to prune Climbing Roses, etc; check out my pages about climbing roses for example.

How To Prune Roses

Step One: Thinning Roses

This type of pruning removes a cane at its origin.

Meaning it cuts the cane, or stem, back to another cane, or to the base of the rose bush.

Thinning out roses does not result in more growth or more blooms.

The goal for thinning roses is to achieve an open and less dense rose, resulting in a more healthy plant.

Step Two: Cutting Back Roses

The correct cut away from an outside pointing bud at an 45 degree angle

Cutting back a rose bud that is dormant stimulates that bud to grow.

Pruning roses during the dormant season, in late winter or early spring, stimulates the bush to grow.

Pruning back to a bud is the correct and best way to stimulate plant growth and provide energy into specific canes that you want to bloom.

Always make the cuts at an outward angle.

The leaves and branching canes grow from 'bud eyes'; small buds that sprouts at intervals along the cane.

The leaves are most often produced in five-leaf leaflets.

When a rose plant is thriving and doing well, new canes grow both from the crown of the plant, and from the junction of the cane and the leaflets.

Step Three: Shearing Roses

Shearing roses is useful for whacking off a portion of the plant.

The result of shearing, promotes vigorous growth below the cuts, and a denser, fully plant.

Shearing is usually done on rose hedges and landscape roses such as shrubs and floribundas that are planted as hedges.

Shearing these rose bushes early on will give you a more attractive rose hedge that is full from the bottom up.

If you follow these simple but common sense instructions for pruning roses, you will have healthy and good looking roses.

More Pruning Tips

Pruning Climbing Roses

Pruning Knockout Roses

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