No, mine does that too. Get a tomato cage or make a short cylinder of wire fencing to support the canes, instead of cutting them off. Baby needs to get strong--cutting off Baby's freshly stored energy ain't going to help.

hoovb, that was a cute answer!

Ingrid

Tomato cage - what a great idea. Mine is doing the same thing, and I have each of the canes with it's own little "sling-shot" piece of wood stuck in the ground, holding it up. A little tacky, but it works!

Thanks so much for the good advice :-). I've even got an extra tomato cage.....

I find this is a very common 'problem' with some Austins (Claire Austin, Golden Celebration, Jude the Obscure). For the first couple of seasons, they are quite lax and flexible and really struggle to bear the weight of blossom. However, after a couple of seasons, especially with a decent pruning regime, they stiffen up nicely, getting extra girth and more basals. I also use a secondary support usually made up of old fruit tree prunings or hazel or willow or whatever comes to hand, really. Ideally, I am looking for stout forked branches where I can rest the floppy canes in a V shaped stick of seasoned wood. Obviously, this would look a bit duff in a very neat or formal garden but in my jungly chaos, it works a treat.

Yesterday I put a cage around YL, but today I decided it was not going to help enough. I had let the stems lie lax too long and felt they were hardening in a sideways or downward direction. I think staking would have been better but I would've needed 8 or 10 stakes. Too much! So, contrarily, I pruned YL back to where the branches seemed firm and weren't growing sideways too much. Yes it was very difficult to let the flowers go, but OTOH, I couldn't stand the awful way this rose was growing. Hopefully the next flush will be on stronger stems; if not I'll have to try staking after all.