Rose renovation advice

Hi,

I've got rather a pretty red climbing/rambling (not sure which) rose in my garden, which is in need of some renovation (I appreciate that now isn't the time for it, but I'm trying to get my head round what I'm going to need to do.)

First up, a few pictures.

Full plant (note that the left hand stump is dead and should be ignored - I'll pull it eventually):


Base:


There are only four live canes (the light brown one on the left is dead and will be removed.) The old, striated, thick cane is producing the flowers on the left of the main picture. The thinnest cane, running next to the thick cane, is producing the central flowers, which extend well out away from the wall (about three feet away.) The other two canes both run up to the top, producing the topmost flowers, but it's hard to see exactly what goes where as they run through a spider's web of dead twiglets etc (see below.)


I'd like to renovate and keep this plant if I can. What should I do this winter? I'm guessing I probably keep all four main canes but cut them all well back and try to retrain against the wall - but not sure if this is really possible as they aren't young, whippy things any more?

All and any advice very gratefully received.

 

Be interested to hear what others think, but over the years, and various properties, I've been confronted with ramblers / climbers that have got a bit out of control and I've always cut them down, in early Spring, to a foot or two and they have come back strongly and then been trained more keenly than before!

 

The first thing to do is organise some way of fixing the stems to the wall. Once you've got your healthy new growth, if you fan it out and tie it in so the stems are curved, you'll have flowers all along the stems. It also prevents thorns from damaging neighbouring stems!
The traditional way is lead-headed square-section nails to which you tie the stems. Even better are horizontal wires spaced at 1' to 18" apart, as wide as 6'. Ordinary galvanized wire is not very visible, especially on a grey brick wall I'd saw the thickest stem down to between 1' and 2' as Kristen suggests, give it a good feed and then train in the resulting new stems. No reason why you can't do it now...the new growth will have time to ripen before winter. Then, next year, take down one of the other, older stems and do the same. You'll be surprised how well your rose will flower if the stems are curved over

 

Good point.

I use vine-eyes - a bit like a cup hook, but with a complete eye on the end, a decent screw thread to put into a rawplug in the wall, and then a reasonably long shaft (with no thread) which will be the distance that the wire "stands off" the wall. Vine eyes come in different length shafts, so you can choose something to suit.

http://www.screwfix.com/search.do?fh_search=vine+eyes&fh_view_size=20

I've tried the flat hammer-in ones on that page, donkey's years ago, and they just bent as I tried to hammer them in and were as good as useless. YMMV.

 

Thanks for the advice. There are guide wires on the wall, about 8 inches or so apart.

I shall cut the big cane tomorrow, assuming the weather co-operates. Presumably I should only do one at a time while it's in leaf to avoid starving the plant - or could I just go ahead and do all the canes now in one go?

 

Even better The other canes look fairly young and productive, so I'd just take out the oldest for now and train the others to the wire in an arc if possible. Once they're bent, they'll sprout flowering shoots along their length. Meanwhile, the old stump will sprout to give cover lower down.
Vine eyes! I knew there was a proper name for them, Kristen...the memory's going

 

Thanks! I'll cut the oldest one to just above a bud eye - if I can see one...

A related question: I have an enormous and basically un-looked-after mess of climbing roses on my back wall, inherited from when we bought the house about three years ago - see this thread: http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/climbers.51970/

Picture added here again for ease of reference:


The tiny white roses (Wedding Day, I think) are prevalent and healthy-looking but only appear low down. Similar story for the R. banksia lutea. The third rose is a more "normal" looking rose - typical size and form - but only produces a small number of localised yellow blooms, again low down. This last one seems in worse shape than the other two, particularly regarding blackspot.

I think this could be turned into a really nice feature - I don't hate it right now, but it's a shame there's no coherent bloom display. What's my best bet - should I just take the whole lot down to a few feet high, then pick half a dozen canes from each plant and basically start from scratch?

 

I doubt you will be able to see any on old wood, but don't worry roses are very good at creating new ones

Dunno why your other rose is only flowering low down, hopefully someone else will

 

OK, so, on closer inspection it turns out that the spider's web of bits and bobs at the top was from another plant entirely - one next door, that has actually managed to grow *through* the wall. It is now gone and that alone makes everything look much better!

I've taken out the dead cane now (no point in waiting) and I think I'll wait until flowering finishes before cutting back all the others. Might as well enjoy the flowers while they're there

Thanks for the comments, everyone, it really helps in terms of confidence even if not everyone is in agreement!

Any comments re the enormous bush in my last picture would also be very welcome

 

The owl is wise

I think I'm rather falling for roses. Now I'm planning a semi-raised bed along the side of an existing concrete shed base, to put a couple more climbers in (and maybe a clematis or two as well) to hide the side of the shed. Of course, I don't actually have a shed, but maybe I will someday! Will climbers happily climb up wires without an underlying structure (there are posts there already to run the wires between, see below...)

 

I'm glad you knew what to do about the rose jungle, Woo I wouldn't have known where to start!
Amanensia, there's a rose walk at, IIRC, Hyde Hall in Essex where the RHS head gardener trained ramblers and clematis on posts and rope swags. It was / is beautiful.....so your potential shed sounds an ideal spot to try a miniature version. The only caveat would be to choose not-too-thorny roses and preferably smallish-flowered viticella clematis as the big-flowered clematis would be shredded by thorny stems.