Hard Summer Pruning Roses for Condition
19 Video Views·Jul 23, 2025
In this vid I'll explain and demonstrate remedial pruning in summer: pruning to improve the condition of an existing shrub when it's showing signs of stress or disease. Often I'll do my ""major"" prune in spring, but for some shrub roses (and ramblers, like this first one) I'll leave it fairly large for a more impressive display. In the example(s) shown here, the shrub began to show signs of stress after the spring bloom. No worries, a later prune (when justified by condition & circumstance) is just fine. It also gives me a chance to look for problems lower down on the stems or at the crown of the shrub, which could explain why the top growth is having difficulty.
In the video I reference near the end, I did a severe prune on Rosa rubrifolia. Here the link: • Pruning: How Low Can You Go?
The rose came back beautifully, and showed gorgeous foliage for the next 4 years. So apparently, that's about the frequency I should target between heavy pruning on that variety.
Hi, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm and today I'm going to use this large rose to explain
and demonstrate why I would take the aggressive step of remedial pruning in the middle of the
season cutting this whole rose right down and it's based on condition to improve the condition
problems on a rose so have a look at the foliage on this rose here I'm going to give you some
close-ups now and you're going to see that it's got yellowish leaves it's having problems with
nutrient uptake those leaves are affected by leaf spot and yet when I look at new growth
shooting from the base of the rose it's greenish it looks like it wants to help grow healthy but
it's being held back by all of this extra material on the top of the rose and this may happen from
time to time the causes who knows it could have been a harsh winter that killed back some of the
roots but it looks like right now we have a an imbalance where the roots can't provide enough
nutrients or enough good condition for the top growth of the rose and my blanket solution for
that generally is to do some remedial pruning and see if the fresh new growth actually comes back
nice so that's what I'm going to do on this one here and I'm going to show you some results of
suns that I've done like this around the yard throughout the season a little bit earlier on
and show you it actually works I'm just choosing a spot low down on the rose taking all the old
wood down not going to leave a whole bunch on except for if it has some fresh new shoots in
the center I may leave those to grow here's what remains after pruning you can see I did take it
down to that two to three foot size and the structure I've tried to get to is an open vase
shaped structure taking off all of those grungy old yellow leaves you can see I've taken off some
very thick stems here and they weren't in great condition and that's one of the things that this
helps to address is that even though the roots are responsible for bringing up the nutrients
it is the condition of the stems that allows you to move that those nutrients and energy up and
down the plant efficiently and when it's a very old shrub like this with very thick canes it
actually can inhibit the movement of that growth so for that reason when I see fresh new green
shoots coming from below the ground right down at the root level those basal breaks are what's going
to refresh this shrub and I have proof because there are some shrubs I've done already let's
have a look at those this rose here is called robusta and you can see beautiful glossy green
foliage on there fresh new growth coming lots of flowers it's on flush right now but earlier this
season I was suffering with similar condition problems on this and as I get down to the base
of the plant you're going to see that that is where I cut it almost down to the base level
there's another one behind there where I cut it maybe up to about eight or ten inches above the
ground level and all of this growth that you see on the top here is fresh new growth spurred on by
then having enough roots plenty of roots to support all this new growth instead of struggling
to support all that old top growth that's in poor condition here's an even more recent example this
is a shrub rose called my gold and you can see that I've taken it down to a similar height as
I did the very first shrub that one along the fence line is actually named guilaine de felagon
and in the meantime it has bounced back from similar looking foliage yellowish with lots of
leaf spot and just kind of gross and unhealthy looking and now it has all this fresh new growth
and at the base I even notice that it has a fresh new basal break coming right from the ground
so that's the future of this rose and all because I took the time to do the remedial pruning instead
of leaving it looking ugly in the landscape this is going to look wonderful and in case
you're wondering about the really long-term effects of a deep pruning like that this is
one that I did in a video probably coming up on four or five years ago now I'll link that one
in the description where I took Rosa rubifolia and took it down to low low canes and it has in
the meantime put on year after year of beautiful foliage that's what this rose is known for
and you know what it's probably due for another low prune pretty quick here so I could do this
early in the spring but there's no harm really if you see the condition starting to decline
of tackling these things right in the middle of summer by the way this is also the appropriate
time to start considering your pruning or after the after the bloom period is the time to consider
your pruning on the old garden once blooming roses as well so this is a good time of year
to take on remedial pruning and the old garden roses once blooming roses so that you can get
them in good condition for next year hope that answered some of your questions about remedial
pruning and if you have any other questions please drop them in the comments below the video I'll see
what I can do to help