How and When to Prune Climbing Roses

There is something exceptional about climbing roses that makes them undeniably powerful and significant in the garden. There are few plants that can produce a spectacular profusion of blooms comparable to a well-cared-for specimen. A significant contributing factor to the blooming power of your climbing rose is how, as well as when, you prune it. 

Climbing cultivars are somewhat different in their habits and needs from shrub roses. Their long, flexible canes make them more versatile, and they also tend to have a more abundant blooming season. Most are spring bloomers, and some are repeat bloomers that, if cared for properly, will produce a second flush of flowers in the fall. 

How you prune your climbing rose is important, but even more so is the timing. If you time it right, you can truly maximize the bounty of blooms that it can produce. Let’s take a look at the different purposes for pruning, how they work, and when you should prune for the best results.

Once-Blooming Cultivars

The aspect of flowering frequency is the most integral in deciding when to prune your climbing rose. Before you pull out your shears, determine what cultivar you have and whether it is a single or repeat blooming variety.

For plants that bloom only once per year (during spring), you should not prune them in the spring. Doing so will remove the buds and reduce or completely disrupt the blooming cycle. Those that set buds on old wood will do so soon after they stop flowering the previous year. Those buds remain intact through the dormancy. 

For once-blooming cultivars, the best time to prune is immediately after they finish flowering. This will typically happen in early to mid-summer. You can still do some shaping later in the season, but it should be minimal to avoid removing those buds. 

How to Do It

After the flowers fall, examine your climbing rose for dead, diseased, or damaged wood before you prune. Climbing roses typically have a handful of thick, central canes with smaller, thinner branches. A pair of loppers or a small saw is helpful for central canes, and a pair of hand shears is usually sufficient for smaller lateral branches. 

Remove all the damaged, dead, and diseased branches, cutting directly above the nearest healthy node. With shrub roses, you’ll want to identify outward-facing nodes, but this is less important for climbing varieties. Cutting above a node will give a cleaner appearance, as it will branch from this point, and any leftover stem will stand out with no further growth. 

After you’ve eliminated any dead wood, thin out any spindly branches that prevent airflow through the middle of the plant. This will help to minimize fungal issues. To keep your rose more compact and control the overall size, you can trim back the more substantial canes by about two to three feet. 

Give your plant an overall shaping, removing the tips of all branches with spent blooms. This encourages growth and the formation of new buds. If your rose is much larger than the space you had intended it for, don’t hesitate to cut it back harder. It will recover as they tolerate hard pruning well. 

Winter/Spring 

For repeat bloomers, which includes most modern cultivars, your most substantial pruning should happen in late winter to early spring. You want to catch it at the beginning of its growth phase so that you get maximum blooming potential. 

Since these plants flower on new wood, you don’t need to worry about cutting off the buds that would have formed in the previous year, as is the case with single-bloomers. Your rose will generate new buds on the new growth, and pruning will encourage an abundance of new growth. 

How to Do It

Before your plant begins to grow in the spring is the ideal time for this type of pruning. Focus first on removing any damaged, dead, or diseased wood that may have grown over the winter. Make your cuts directly above a node at a 45-degree angle, facing outward. 

Once you’ve removed the dead weight, focus on the interior and create space for air and light to reach the inner branches. Thin out spindly branches that are unlikely to support or produce flowers. 

Give the entire plant a light trim to encourage additional growth. This will maximize the number of buds it produces for its first flush. 

Repeat Bloom 

Repeat-blooming instructions apply to the second category of climbing roses, but should be done at the same time as you would prune a once-blooming variety. After the first flush is complete and the blooms have fallen, a light pruning is in order to encourage a second flush later in the summer, possibly in early fall. 

How to Do It

This time, all you’re really doing is a thorough deadheading of the entire plant. Everywhere that a branch bloomed, trim off the end. Though most roses are self-cleaning, those terminal clusters won’t fall off. Only the petals will. 

When you snip off all the terminal clusters, you will encourage new growth. As long as you do this early enough in the season, you are likely to see at least one more flush.

Rejuvenation

If your rose is beginning to look spindly near the base, with little branching and sparse foliage, it may be time for rejuvenation. Doing this will increase the rose’s overall vigor and growth when spring comes back around and it re-enters a growth phase. 

This type of pruning should take place in the late fall, after the first freeze. A freeze will cause the rose to enter dormancy and lose some, if not all, of its leaves. The loss of leaves makes it easier to see the overall structure of the plant. Pruning too early will encourage new growth that can make the rose more vulnerable to winter weather. 

How to Do It

Dormancy is the best indicator that it’s time to prune a climbing rose for rejuvenation purposes. Start with a general cleanup of dead, damaged, and diseased wood. Thin out twiggy growth, such as branches that are thinner than a pencil, which can snap easily. 

Once you’ve done some preliminary work, it’s time to take a good look at the structure of the plant. Your climbing rose will most likely have a handful of larger, central canes with branches growing outward from them. Remove any crossing branches that rub against each other, as these cause weakness in the branches they rub against.

If any old canes running through the middle of the plant have become unproductive, remove them all the way down to the base. Roses can produce new growth from the base, so they will rebound. 

Finally, if you notice any of the larger stems are losing their vigor, cut them back to encourage more branching. Follow the branch to the place where the foliage thickens, and cut it just above a healthy node. This will encourage fuller, bushier growth in the spring.