Rose bushes have a very long lifespan. A climbing rose bush, for example, could live 20 or even 30 years. That said, you must take good care of your shrubs to keep them healthy and make them flower. One of the main things to get right is their size. It is done to encourage their flowering. If you do not cut your rose bush, it will become exhausted and its flowers will only appear on the top of the bush and will bloom less and less. Ultimately, your bush will die from disease. But knowing when to cut them is also essential when you take care of your queen of flowers. But can you prune rose bushes in January? The pros’ answers below.

You will be enchanted by the queen of flowers if you take good care of her

What are the types of rose bushes?

Shrub roses

Also called bush rose, they are the most common in gardens. Its great advantages are that it does not grow very high and gives large flowers. They give a dense and branched habit which can reach a height of 1.80 m maximum.

Its flowers can be remontant or not.

Everbearing rose bushes

Its advantages are that it can flower and re-flower throughout the season. We prune it in spring, always in March, and we can clean it in autumn too. Its flowering begins in May-June. This is the period when the rose bush is most floriferous.

Flowering continues in successive waves throughout the summer, until October.

Climbing roses

It is a rose bush that grows high, used to trellis a wall or structure.

It can even form a screen

Why should you prune rose bushes?

Pruning will stimulate your plants whatever their nature: shrubs, stems or climbers. And even, the more you cut its branches, the stronger it will become with the next growth. If you don’t remove the faded flowers, they will deplete the shrub, turning into seeds.

The seeds draw all their sap to the detriment of young branches and future flowers

When is the best time to prune rose bushes?

Prune early, prune late, nothing beats pruning… According to some experienced gardeners, rose bushes should be pruned once a year, at the end of winter. This is very important, because in this way we wake up and nourish the plant after the long winter and low temperatures. But in fact, there are several periods for pruning your rose bushes.

• Significant pruning is done in November, before the first frosts.

This is the growing season when plants stop growing and prepare for winter. The objective of this pruning is to eliminate dead branches and aerate the middle of the shrub.

• The second pruning around winter is after frost.

Depending on your climate, it is between late February and early April. But you can cut your non-everbearing rose bushes at the end of their flowering, during the month of August. Modern varieties of roses are generally everbearing and those that are older only flower once, in spring. This is why their pruning at the end of winter is obligatory. So, you only have one rule to follow: avoid frosty days when pruning them. The pruning period for remontant shrubs is more specific for them.

The idea is to do it just before the vegetation restarts, when you see the buds swelling

Which rose bush should not be pruned?

It is especially important not to prune non-blooming roses in spring (botanicals, old climbers, lianas, etc.) which only flower once during the year. Otherwise, you’ll remove all the developing buds and won’t enjoy the flowers. Only remove dead, old, worn or bald branches by cutting them at the base. There is no need to prune bushy ground cover roses every year. Proceed every other year to cut them. In the spring, all you have to do is remove the dead wood. The following year you can act, but in November, not in spring.

Prune them after flowering

What applies to all varieties of rose bushes is to equip yourself with quality pruning shears. Prune with the blade on the plant side to better heal the branches.

The pruning itself is done in a specific way for the different types of rose bushes

Pruning shrub roses

It is practiced in March. Here’s how to do it:

• You cut to three eyes

The eye is the swelling that appears on the branches of your rose bush during the winter. It is just this eye that gives rise to new branches. Remove the oldest branches from the beginning. Keep five or six strong branches.

• Shorten last year’s shoots by a third or two thirds.
• Eliminate damaged wood
• Cut off the suckers, the branches that grow below the grafting point.

To tell the difference between the gourmand and the young shoot, you need to count the leaf lobes of the rose bush. On the base of the traditional rose bush, the leaves have two lobes. On the gourmand, the leaves have seven.

Prune the others to three eyes

Everbearing roses

It’s like a mathematical formula: The number of branches issued the previous year is multiplied by two to obtain the number of eyes to leave. Let’s say a rosebush produced twelve branches last year, then you leave twenty-four eyes on them. When regrowth begins and reaches 20-30 cm, you prune 10% to three eyes every day.

Climbing roses

Prune them along the branches, every twig by 15 cm, or 3-4 eyes.

It will form a new framework to bring out lateral shoots

We must distinguish between those which flower throughout the year and those which only flower once a year. Prune the long ones at the end of flowering, removing a third of the branches which had flowered. Thin out the shrub by removing all dead branches. Cut back single-blooming rose bushes in late fall. You must apply the flared cut, that is, obtain the desired shape of the shrub. At the same time, you aerate the center of the rose bush by removing branches that point toward the middle of the shrub.

The objective is to let the light pass through and to ventilate it well.

Throughout the flowering period, do maintenance pruning to renew flowers. You prune under flowers or spent flower clusters to encourage new growth. These will in turn give even more splendid flowers.