How do I prune and train a climbing rose?

A climbing rose that flowers only in a cluster at the top has not been pruned wrongly so much as trained wrongly. Sap runs most strongly to the highest bud on an upright stem, so the buds below it stay dormant. Bend that stem towards the horizontal and the dominance disappears — every bud along its length breaks into a short flowering shoot. Everything else in climbing rose pruning follows from that one piece of plant behaviour.

Safety

What you'll need

• Sharp secateurs
• Loppers for old thick stems
• Pruning saw (optional)
• Long gauntlet gloves and eye protection
• Soft ties or garden twine
• Wall wires or trellis, if there is nothing to tie to (optional)

Step by step

1. Prune in winter, between leaf fall and the buds swelling.Any time from late autumn to late winter when the weather is not freezing. The plant is bare, so you can see the framework, and a repeat-flowering climber flowers on shoots made in the coming season, so nothing is lost.
2. Before cutting anything, identify the framework.The framework is the small number of thick main stems that carry everything else. They are permanent. Everything growing out of them sideways is a side shoot, and side shoots are what you prune. Confusing the two is the mistake that turns a climber into a flowerless bush.
3. Remove dead, damaged and diseased wood first.Dead stems are brown and brittle through the middle when cut; live wood is green just under the bark and white inside. On a neglected plant this stage alone takes an hour and transforms it.
4. Take out the genuinely worn-out main stems at the base.One or occasionally two per year, choosing the oldest, thickest and least productive, cutting right down to ground level. This keeps the framework renewing itself. Do not do this if there is no younger stem to replace it.
5. Shorten every side shoot to two or three buds.Count two or three buds out from where the side shoot joins the main stem and cut just above one, leaving a short spur of about 100 to 150mm. Those spurs are where this summer's flowers will come from. Over the years each spur thickens into a knuckle, which is exactly right.
6. Untie, lower and re-train the main stems as near horizontal as they will bend.This is the step people skip and it is the one that matters. Fan the main stems out sideways, or spiral them round a pillar, and tie them to wires or trellis. Bend them gently and stop if a stem creaks — a stiff old stem will snap.
7. Tie in any new basal shoots you want to keep.A vigorous new stem from low down is a future framework member. Train it into a gap while it is still flexible, in late summer when it is produced, rather than trying to bend it once it has hardened.
8. Tie with soft material, in a figure of eight.Cross the tie between the wire and the stem so the two are held apart. A tie wrapped tightly round both will cut into the bark as the stem thickens, and a rose stem strangled at one point dies from there upward.
9. Clear and bin every fallen leaf and prunings from underneath.Black spot overwinters on fallen leaves and on stem lesions and reinfects the plant from below in spring. Do not compost rose leaves.
10. Feed and mulch when growth begins in spring.A rose fertiliser and a good mulch of compost or well-rotted manure kept clear of the stems. Climbers on walls are in dry, poor soil and repay feeding more than almost any other garden plant.

Tips

• If a stem will not bend to horizontal, take it to whatever angle it will accept. Even 45 degrees produces far more flowering shoots than vertical does.
• Train the framework early, from the first two or three years. Attempting to fan out a fifteen-year-old climber usually means snapping most of it.
• Diagonal training up a pillar or a post, spiralling round it, achieves the same effect as horizontal training on a wall.
• A climber against a house wall is in the driest ground in the garden. Water it deeply through its first two summers and in any long dry spell after that.

Common mistakes

• Shortening the main framework stems instead of the side shoots — It removes the structure the plant flowers from and provokes a mass of upright regrowth. The framework is kept for years; only the side shoots are cut back.
• Training everything vertically because it is easier — Apical dominance means only the top buds break, so you get a bare wall with a bunch of flowers at gutter height. Horizontal training is the whole technique.
• Tying tightly with wire or plastic-coated cable ties — The stem thickens and the tie girdles it. Everything above the tie eventually dies. Use soft ties and check them every winter.
• Pruning it hard in the hope of making it flower lower down — Hard pruning generates vigorous upright growth, which is the opposite of what produces flowers. Lowering the stems is the answer, not cutting them.

If it doesn't work

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