How to Grow Roses in the Pacific Northwest — Seattle’s Favorite Garden Store Since 1924 – Swansons Nursery

Pruning your roses will help keep them bushy and full of blooms. We won’t get too in-depth in this post (watch for a detailed rose pruning post, coming soon!), but here are a few basics.

To encourage continual blooms, deadhead faded flowers by cutting down to just above an outward-facing leaf with five individual leaves. New budding stems will push out from this spot. You can also thin out any crowded branches during the growing season.

In the late fall, many gardeners prune off rose hips (the fruit of the rose plant) to encourage energy to go into preparing for the next growing season rather than ripening the hips. You can experiment with pruning them off or leaving them for ornamental purposes or for wildlife and then decide which method is best for you.

Major pruning is usually done each year, from the end of February through early March, depending on the weather. Ideally, the roses are still dormant but there is little risk of hard freezes in the near future. There are many methods, from light pruning that removes dead or diseased canes and takes the remaining canes down slightly to hard pruning, which leaves only 5 thick canes per bush, all shorter than 1 foot. Look for our upcoming blog post about pruning roses for more in-depth information.