I've got roses of that age as well, and I usually wait to remove a cane low until I see signs that that gnarly ones is dieing. (Symptoms are that all of its new growth is the sickly yellow green when the rest of the plant's new growth is normal green.) In some I've cut them when I see dry rot on the inner wood. Sometimes it's carpenter ants inside the rose. For others, I'm really torn looking for a way to get the dormant eyes (down in the corky bark) to break to give new canes.
In my conditions, the ones that have gone own root are happily chugging along. But I've had some where the budunion seems to have morphed to a mass that's more root than scion, and I've lost five big old ones to a lack of putting out new basal breaks. When we've dug them out, it's clear that they didn't go own root. And that the bud union isn't a scion dominated swelling on the rootstock any more.
I have two huge caned McCartney Roses (HT) and they aren't that happy being pruned. I've followed suggestions in the ARS for "if so many old canes, cut back this #," and it hasn't worked. (But the suggestions were from the PNW and our growing conditions are very different.)
I wish I had good answers. I don't. And I'm sure I've made mistakes here.
Locally, most roses don't last that long. Exhibitors are after the newest and oldies that don't win are goners.
And the found roses we try to save have all gone own root.
(A lesson in survivorship.)

My garden is also twelve years old this year, though I didn't plant it all at once so some roses are younger and I try a few new roses every year too. It seems that pruning is harder and taking longer than I remember because of making so many decisions about which canes to remove or keep and having a lot more wood to dispose of.

For the past two years I have been concentrating on rejuvenating my older roses which means cutting out canes that have gotten old and woody. I don't wait for the cane to start dying to cut it out, but in many I've seen cane borers which would eventually kill the cane anyway, or partial cane die-back. But last year we had a spring and summer drought and I didn't get as many basal breaks as I hoped for. I don't normally water my established roses and let them go dormant in summer, but this year I'm going to water in spring and early summer if we have another dry year to encourage more growth. I fertilize with an organic fertilizer "Rose Tone" and alfalfa meal and I've heard that alfalfa will promote basal breaks so I'm going to use more of that than rose tone also. So my recipe is generally remove old stuff, fertilize, and make sure there's plenty of water.

If a rose starts to decline in spite of this care I'll think about replacing it. I'm seeing a few roses which I might replace if they don't respond this year, and interesting like what Ann was noticing these are budded ones that seem to have stopped producing from the bud union, but it's only a few roses.

I heard in a local rose class here in So Cal that you could take a hunk of steel wool & scrub the corky bud union & that would allow a new basal break to erupt. Ive not tried it yet, but my M. Tillier ( antique tea) looks to need some incitment to break new canes...

greenrose,
If you have any luck, let us know. I tried that, except used a wire brush, but saw no result. That was before I used alfalfa, though, and maybe the two in combination might work.

You don't mention what type of roses are in your old age group. If they are modern grafted roses then I might treat them one way, if they are OGR's or own root I might respond differently. I've been growing roses for 22 years now, and as time gets shorter I often wonder why I'm expanding all that energy and time on an underperforming rose. I think some of it is scentimental attachment, some of it's the semi-hesitation I have about the soil sickness replant disease (some think it's real some not), and a little of it is the "hope springs eternal" that is in all true gardeners hearts. But having just ripped out an old established bed last year, there's something to be said for the excitement of trying to decide about the new varieties I can now plant.

Like Ann I have tried the ARS article pruning method and it worked amazingly on one rose but not on another. I have my theories about why, but it's worth a try if you don't just want to throw up your hands and plant something new.

12 years is not very old for a rose in NorCal. They live a long time there. I used to run a garden maintenance business in the SF area and I had a few clients with very old rose gardens, much older than that. I had one client in particular who had some very very old roses, and she had never ever removed any canes. The roses were ok, but not very productive - every single one had nearly a dozen, 3ft tall trunks of wood, topped by a few flowering canes.

That first winter I told her I was going to prune her roses properly for her. I removed 3 or 4 of the oldest woodiest least productive canes, right down to the graft union, which had never been done before - every cane had been topped but none had ever been removed. She nearly had a heart attack when she saw them. But, 2 months later, she was ecstatically singing my praises when her roses put out more new canes and more flowers than she'd had since they were new. I gave them plenty of balanced rose fertilizer, but I never used Epsom salt in that area - NorCal soils don't need it. Alfalfa got good results, and fish meal, and kelp.

I find that the best way to get new basal canes is to first start with a well established rose - one that's been in the ground for a few years. Then, water and fertilize well, and treat with alfalfa tea once or twice in spring. Then, once you have more than a half dozen canes or so, selectively remove canes as they age and lose energy. That's it. Here we need to use Epsom salt because of our soil and rainfall, but it won't create basals in areas not deficient in magnesium. New basals come on roses that have plenty of energy, and that comes from water, nutrients, sunlight, and well established roots.

12 years is not very old for a rose in NorCal. They live a long time there.

*** That was my thought.
In my own garden, I have 20-y-o roses that are huge and vigorous, but in NoCal! WOW!
Over and over, we've found beautiful OLD plants up there.
Of course, the best of them are roses that haven't been pruned much. At least, not pruned much for many years.

I think Reg has the right program: Selective removal of canes that are ageing and un-productive, as opposed
to a shortening of healthy growth.

Jeri

Have faith! The basals will come. Keep your roses working on fresh, new wood. You and I have the same soil. I never add epsom salts or any kind of magnesium to my soils for the exact same reason. I feed my soil calcium!

Good training generates growth where you want it. The basals will come. And for those miscreants that grow backwards, I view it as an opportunity.

Excellent advice from some of the best gardeners on these forums.

For some reason, the term 'pruning' has been mis-used to mean 'shortening growth' - not helped by such terms as 'whacking-back' or the misguided idea to butcher plants with a hedge cutter. Most effective pruning is done from the ground up, not the other way round.

As Cass says (and I know you do it anyway, Pam :) 'Keep your roses working on new wood.' Most of the roses at Mottisfont are over thirty years old, but most of their canes are less than five.

Best wishes
Jon

Great advice and explanations! For me, this is the big question...I have no idea in the early spring which canes are not productuve and which are. How can you tell? Visually, I suppose it's easy to tell the difference between and new and old, but productive and non productive? I don't understand how to determine that at pruning time, and I can't recall from the year past, which canes did what. Or, for that matter, how old the canes are. This single question has caused me much confusion. What am I missing?

Telling how old canes are takes observations over time.
Take a HT.
First year, the thorns are smooth, and the cane itself is green and smooth.
Second year: thorns same, cane starts to get some bumps and may have some longitudinal ridges on the year old part. New breaks on it are first year look.
Third year: thorns same, cane's surface no longer looks fresh green and has a lot more bumps and/or ridges and is more bumps than smooth.
Year four..canes looks barky. And in year four or five some of the thorns may split longitudinally.
As the bud union swells after year three or four, sometimes the bark there will spall off.
This is oversimplified but gives a starting place.

I appreciate this information also. I have some Penelope roses that are almost too big, and I have not been sure how to cut them back. (Basye's Blueberry also).

Sammy

Another point to consider is that not all roses are created equal. The inherent vigor of a variety plays a big part in just how much you can prune back or cut down. Since I only grow one OGR I can't say if this vigor consideration is true of them, but I suspect so. When I first started growing roses the vigor issue seemed to be discussed more then now, but still it's often overlooked when prunning advice is given. If your rose wasn't particularly vigorous in it's youth, it will more then likely not improve as it goes into old age.

I agree maryl, 100%. All roses are different in nature and will react accordingly to their environments.

Thanks everyone for your input. I really appreciate the great advice. Maryl sorry I didn't talk about which roses were showing their age the most. I put this post on the Rose Forum rather than the Antique because the roses that show their age are mostly grafted HTs. Some of my own root roses are getting like that too though. You are so right about roses being different in their nature. I try when pruning to take this into account.

Yes, great topic! Thanks, Ann, for your answer. Still, aside from visually being able to tell young canes from old, how can one tell a productive old cane from an unproductive old cane? Or, must all old canes be pruned?

What I see here in older, unproductive canes is a massively increased susceptibility to winterkill. It seems like something that is true anywhere that gets winter. I'll see what looks like an awful lot of winterkill on a hardy rose, only to find out that all of it is branching off from one or two canes.

It does help to know the roses well enough to have a rough idea how long the class/variety keeps viable canes. I have a couple of gallicas that I usually prune out a third of the canes every year because those varieties have canes with very short lifespans. At the other end of the spectrum is R. hugonis, which after more than ten years is starting to have trouble with the very oldest canes. If I treated either of them appropriately to the other type, I'd have a mess.

Great advice from everyone! I remember when I removed my first old wood- I was so scared to go for it. I agree that own root roses keep going longer. The ones I can't get to make new canes any more, I am replacing with own root virus free plants and as they get bigger, I am removing the grafted older one of the same variety. Right now I have and old Pristine and a Queen Elizabeth that don't want to make new canes. I took off some old canes last year but the roses never grew anything to replace them. When the own root youngsters get big enough, I will dig out the old roses. Space is limited and so I want plants that will work as hard as I do. I didn't feel that way in the past, but its sad for me watching my favorite plants produce fewer and fewer canes every year when I know I could get own root replacements that would do better.

What about those old, ugly canes with what looks like bright green, thick, long canes growing from them? That is often the case. Very confusing!

An old cane that produces a thick healthy long cane (thick and healthy are THE operative words) is a keeper.
Remember where roses have leaf buds. (You know this even if you don't know that you know this) When a new cane sets off to grace the world, the first things that happen are a bunch of leaves fairly close spaced at the lower two inches of the cane. These are spaced increasing distances apart and on all sides of the cane. Often these leaves drop off before they are even noticed, but their bud eyes (that were protected by the small original-on-that-cane leaves) remain and have a potential to break. When they don't break, sometimes for years and years, they are still dormant bud eyes with the potential to make new canes. Even when the cane gets old, they are there. More often, you'll see breaks farther out on the cane. They are also good. And the ones that will break are often on the upper surface of the cane. The really basal ones are the ones we have to be so careful of in early spring when we are weeding and trying at the same time to conserve those very delicate new stems that can be canes if they survive.
Preservation of these new starts is one reason to go in and remove old and dead wood before the new growth starts.

I did see some new starts way down low today. I know it's still winter. But roses do this and I'll watch and if need be toss chickweed on them as a odd but efficient form of insulation.

Good lesson for today, Ann, thank you!! I feel SO much better, I really do for this knowledge.

Yes. Thanks gang. Great reading.

Thank you for this discussion! My son just bought a house in Portland, Oregon that was built in 1942. I explored the yard with my daughter-in-law and we found 8 or 9 roses that look healthy but like they have been there a long time. We are so excited to see what they are! The house and garden were well cared for until 2 years ago. Some of these roses have big hips like rugosas, but we have some fun learning ahead as I advise and teach them how to care for what they have. There were lots of other shrubs too so we will have this summer to evaluate what is there before making any large changes.

Is there anyone in the Portland area that I could chat directly to on this list? I am living in the Seattle area and would like some local recommendations. Our son and family are in SE Portland.

My house was built in 1929. I don't have any roses that old
(I don't think) although there are some camellias that are
well over 50 years old given the diameter of their trunks
and some azaleas and grape vines that are probably about as
old in addition to a big sycamore that was planted in the
1930s.

Anyway, I do have half a dozen old roses that were here when
I moved in 6 years ago and which have been here quite some
time given that they were completely overwhelmed by the
azaleas (fairly slow growing) and under the canopy of the
sycamore. I have to imagine they were planted when the tree
was a lot smaller to even be able to survive with so much
shade and root competition.

Most of these roses are now reduced to a cane or two. I
tried scrubbing them with a wire brush (removed a lot of
bark), pruning them hard, using epsom salts, and just about
everything else. However, they are what they are: senior
citizens lacking the vigor of their youth.

I think roses have the ability to live a very long time
given specimens grown in public gardens. My neighbor has
a Cecile Brunner that she planted when she bought the house
decades ago. I like the charm of old plants that have seen
it all so I refuse to remove them and what they lack in
quantity of blooms they make up for in quality. (A rose
I think is 'Peace' produces just a handful of the most
perfect flowers each year.)

Point being: roses can live a long time, but they will age
and you can't really reverse the process no matter what
tricks you try. They aren't as long-lived as redwoods, so
expect that at some point (probably 20-30 years) will you
have to replace them if you want the vigor of young plants.
I am talking grafted plants here. Some own-root roses on
Southern plantations seem to do very well and they are 100+
years old.

More really good advice. This is something I've felt so unsure about, not being able to invest the amount of time I'd like into my garden with work obligations, meaning, I don't have the time to study and remember all that goes on with which, and since I have so many roses too! Sort of a paradox, I guess. Thanks Cass and dimitrig very much. So insightful.

I just thought I'd bump this back up because there is a lot of good advice here. I had to laugh because I asked this question originally and now have completely forgotten. Here in 2011 I'm still worrying about my roses getting older. Perhaps the gardener is the real problem

Oh, thanks, Pam, for bumping it up. Just reading what Cass said about people simply shortening long new canes made me cringe. I have a 1-1/2 year old Bow Bells and no experience to know what to do with it. It shoots out 6-ft canes like crazy, and I've been basically cutting a lot of them in half, trying to make it bushy. Now I know that sounds terrible. What have I been doing to this poor bush?!? Maybe I should be pegging it to force growth along the canes. I hope it forgives me, but really, it acts like it isn't bothered by little old me, like an elephant occasionally swatting at a fly. This is a VERY vigorous plant, growing in almost total shade in the hot months. (When I get some cash, the trees will be limbed up.) Should I stop cutting the canes in half? (I think yes.) They only sprout from the last budeye and not lower down anyway. If I could move it, I would. It's been a beauty so far.

This is an excellent post. So much rose knowledge!! Thanks, everyone!

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...