Can't be done with roses growing on them. Might be possible with Viticella clematis or other flowering climbers that normally re-grow from the roots or otherwise low down each spring - except that optimum time for shearing conifers is late spring-early summer.

Thanks, bboy! The roses are already interlaced with the trees, so maybe I should have asked this two years ago, when i was planting. Maybe I'll just round off the tops at twelve feet, rather than try to shear the sides, every year.

I take it you're right on the coast, if you're zone 8. I'm envious. Heard from a friend in Raymond that the coast missed the worst of the heat wave.

Zone 8 extends from the coast to the Cascade foothills. Both bboy and I are located in the Puget Sound basin and we most certainly experienced the record breaking temps!

I trim Crypt. here in Atlanta. I find that it pushes out lots of new buds, which become foliage, and the cut is no longer visible and by no means brown.

Thanks, arauquoia! That's precisely what I was hoping to hear.