Training Climbing Roses: The Second Important Step To A Gardening Masterpiece

Planting & Caring for Your Rose Garden

Roses are a great addition to anyone’s life, home or yard. They add color and beauty and they smell great, but over the years, roses have acquired a reputation as being one of the most fragile and time-consuming flowers you can attempt to grow on your own.

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A climbing rose bush left to grow will soon become and untidy bush. Training climbing roses is the only way to ensure you end up with a neat, tidy and full covering for any wall or fence.

Climbing roses do not support themselves and will not twine themselves around a support trellis or support wires. You have to physically train them by trimming away unwanted growth and carefully bending the individual stems to the direction you want them to grow. You also have to tie the stems to the trellis or support wires using a soft string or piece of cloth which will not cut into the stem (strips of old pantyhose are particularly useful for this purpose).

When a climbing rose grows it produces two different kinds of shoots. The first are the main structural canes and from these grow the secondary flowering shoots. Only the strongest and healthiest looking structural canes should be chosen and tied loosely to the trellis or support wires.

The structural canes should be gently fanned out from the ground and gently bent in an arc until they can be run horizontally along the trellis or support wires. Space the canes evenly and as close to horizontal as possible.

By forcing the main canes of the rose plant to grow horizontally, they will produce side shoots which grow vertically to fill the spaces between the main canes you have tied to the trellis or support wires.

When training climbing roses, it is important to prune the side shoots back after they have bloomed to encourage new growth. The main canes must be pruned back once they have reached the height and width of your trellis or support wires. Side shoots should be pruned back by about two thirds of their length and cut just after an outward facing bud.