We did a rose pruning masterclass with Kerry today. I have done rose pruning at the Royal Pavilion Gardens in Brighton, at Great Dixter and at Sissinghurst. Everywhere varies and have their own methods. There are basic rules that are a running theme, but generally it is looking at what one wants to get out of the rose, how it's growing and to read the rose and understand what it wants. Some floribunda types for example don't want to be cut as low as is suggested commonly in textbooks, but is better when it is left a bit taller.
The roses in the Bowles-Lyon garden are planted in blocks. The idea here is that you almost treat each block, like one big bush and prune them more or less uniform to each other. This is why hedgecutters has been known be to be used to cut great swathes at a time.
All types are in this garden including Hybrid Teas, Floribundas, Shrubs and Species roses. The labels here tell you what they are - indicated by a letter in a bracket on the bottom left hand side. David Austen roses have 'Aus' at the beginning of the name. A lot of David Austen roses have been used here, but Kerry feels that they have not been suitable for this garden - they have been labelled as modern shrub roses, but she says that D. Austen has claimed himself that he likes to breed roses long and tall for growing at the back of borders. A lot of the roses have been planted out too close together too (they should be around 2 or 3 feet apart ideally), she says this is probably because when this part of the garden first opened the designers wanted instant impact. Over time, when the roses have died, she has replaced them with what she felt were better cultivars. She is able to do this without breaching the design as long as she doesn't change the colour scheme of it. Her replacements have been from Fry's roses, Peter Beale and roses from Germany.
I pruned two types of shrub ones and a species one. Shrub Rosa Mortimer Sackler 'Ausorts' was quite straightforward - I reduced them to about two thirds of it's height, and shortened the stems at the front pointing outwards a bit lower than that. I took out dead and diseased and intuitively cut out ones that were crossing over too much and overly small twiggy branches, to allow for more space and ventilation, in the hope that they will grow better structurally, as some were being squeezed out by others or were overcrowded.
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| Photo 1: Rosa Mortimer Sackler 'Ausorts' |
The David Austin modern shrub Rosa The Lady's Blush 'Ausescar', a dark red stemmed one, almost thornless, one I found frustrating, probably because they were roses that Kerry talked about that were not suited this type of border and for how we were treating them, their growth habits was to shoot out long stems, but guaging from previous years cuts, when you cut them, they reshoot from where you shoot like a stairs effect and that growth gets weaker and weaker, it is almost better to cut them back to the base or leave as long stems. They had hardly any twiggy stems and when they did, due to us trying to manipulate them like shorter shrub roses, I left them a bit if they were healthy and not too crowded, as any lateral bushing out growth was rare.
I finished with the more straightforward Rosa dupontii - a species rose, where we cut off all the stems that had flowered (old wood) and left long arching stems that will flower next year. Main principle of thinning, taking out dead and diseased applied, as well as leaving and taking out stems in consideration of shape.
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| Photo 2: Rosa dupontii before pruning. |
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| Photo 3: Rosa dupontii after pruning. |