" I have 2 young roses, one is..."

Well, right there is the thing. 1 & 2 year old roses need more time to fill out. I only dead-head young roses that young. Let them grow and settle in and establish. Roses store their carbohydrates in the canes, so when you are cutting off canes you are cutting off stored energy. Yes, the asymmetrical shape is annoying, but as the Shaolin monk said, "Patience, grasshopper!"

As to that piece of eden blog, it's pretty darn silly, so take it with a grain of salt.

what about planting a few bright annuals near the lop-siders, to distract the eye this year?

Hoovb--pretty funny! I love your blog

It all depends on what kind of roses they are. Many (most) old or antique roses need little or no pruning in mild climates, except for gentle shaping (or more severe shaping if they are encroaching into a driveway or path), and to remove dead wood. Of course, in cold climates the weather "prunes" them, and you just have to remove the dead wood.

Modern HTs need more pruning. I agree with hoozb that very young (less than 4 year old) roses should not be pruned at all (always the exception for dead wood), so that they can have enough energy to actually grow into rose bushes.

Jackie

I don't have any photos of before and after pruned roses, but you should check out Paul Zimmerman's videos about rose pruning. Those are VERY helpful for experienced as well as novice folks, and they show the rose beforehand, the process, and the aftermath. I don't have the website handy off-hand, but you should be able to google them without problem.

I agree with the general consensus not to worry about the shape of a rose bush until it is around 3-4 years old. After that point, one thing to consider is that a rose tends to branch out from the place where it is pruned. That's why the candelabras you describe are high on the bush, since it is branching from the pruning point. A general rule of thumb is to prune below the point where you want the rose to end up, the amount below depending on how vigorous or tall a rose you have. For instance, in my mailbox bed where I have naturally short growers that start to stretch above the 3' where I want to keep them, I don't prune the wayward canes down to 3' but more like 18-24", so that the rose can branch out and still reach the desired height. As we've said, I only do this on mature plants

Another rule of thumb is not to take off more than 1/3-1/2 of a rose at any given pruning if you can help it. Obviously in zone 5 I have to violate that rule for most roses most winters, as 70-90% of the rose is often dead. If you only have one cane below a candelabrum, you also might need to violate that, but definitely wait in that case until you're sure you have a robust root system. Also know that it will slow down your bloom cycle for a while till the rose catches up, and some roses (like teas) really resent this treatment at any point.

Cynthia

Well, I am in the camp of pruning young roses to give them shape if they are not balanced. When they throw up long, unbranched canes it is often necessary to shorten those canes to encourage the shrub to build a future of a sturdy, self-supporting structure. I strongly disagree with those that don't prune roses less than 4 years old. By four years I expect the rose to be filling out into a beautiful branched shape and many varieties won't do this on their own. Now I don't know if this applies to twiggy teas and chinas because I don't grow those, but it benefits the old European roses and most varieties of Austins. I learned this by visiting great gardens and seeing the roses pruned in the winter and looking at self-supporting structure. I agree that roses are beautiful looking when pruned in the winter and naked showing their structure, and it's an excellent way to study them.

Amazingly, I found that if I did nothing whatsoever, no catastrophe occurred. And so, I often do (nothing)...until I cannot struggle past the surging tangle. Obviously,unless you have my low standards, this sort of slacking is not completely acceptable ....and I do sometimes find myself quite keen to do a bit of displacement pruning rather than digging or turning the compost or the endlessly futile weeding. Having been so idle, the roses are always a forbidding tangle but hey, there are loads of dieback, and dodgy canes to chop out.....then I attempt to rescue some of the path and finally, a few flourishes where I convince myself I am creating a 'framework' (in my own head)...but nevertheless, this counts as a job done (virtuous pat on back). Rubbish advice if you are keen on getting the full rosy potential or keeping things neat and trim - but I quite like having a massive bush (smirk) and since the roses I favour are thuggish anyway, I have convinced myself that pruning them is a vague mystery (like politics or religion), best left alone, In fairness, I am usually knackered by the demands of fruit trees - I have far too many of these and not enough room so all of them have been mangled into cordons, espalliers and other strangled forms (an early craze which now must be maintained) so it is a massive relief that my roses are considerably less demanding.

Campanula -- Have I told you lately that I love you?

Look -- she's right. When it comes to pruning young roses, less is often more. We don't prune a lot these days (my husband is chopping away at our mature Bishop Darlington however, and we agree that more needs to come off the behemoth) -- but for YOUNG roses less really is more. We let such roses mature, before we get serious with them.

I love the elegance of a freshly pruned garden. And the young leaves just emerging are just as lovely. Really, the roses in bloom are only one of the beautiful stages in the year of a rose garden.

Rosefolly

I had a similar look on both my Austin''s, Golden Celebration and Graham Thomas. Because of last year's extreme winter I had to cut them both off very short. Here are the pictures.

Golden Celebration before pruning on 04-30-14.

After Pruning

And this was on 06-01-14. It did bloom around June 20th.

This is Graham Thomas on 04-30-14 pre-pruning.

and post pruning.

and on June 25th

As you can see they both sent up new canes from the bottom.

Gotta say if you only have one cane, I would prune it down a third and leave it alone. You need a healthy rose with a few canes before you can prune that is what is behind the waiting 3 years to prune. What you have right now is not vigorous enough for the long haul.

Seil,

Thank you so much for posting your photo's. Like you, I live in a cold climate. And like you, most of my roses were killed back to the ground last winter. I ended up with a couple 'one cane wonders' but the important thing is that they survived. After a year of TLC I'm sure they'll be back to being their beautiful selves this Spring. That's the beauty of planting own-root roses.

Thank you everyone, and especially those of you who have posted photos. I have been on a little hiatus because I had some minor surgery, and to be honest I forgot that I posted this! I truly understand what most of you mean when you say that you should not prune until the roses are about 3-4 years old, I know they need their energy stores, I know that they have awkward teenage stages (hey, who doesn't?). The thing is that most of the ones I am having troubles with are Austins, and just judging by how much growth they put on last year, if I went this whole year without pruning them I think by fall they might be gathering up mailmen and loose dogs that wonder on to my porch. I suppose I am of the same mindset as Lori_elf, to help inspire new growth I want to get rid of some of this awkward growth that will not support strong, large canes, even if they seem a little young for it.

I always get a little confused when talking about the ages of some of my roses anyway, Munstead wood for example is going into it's second year in my garden, but I purchased it as a large (4' at time of purchase), grafted, 3 gallon plant from my local nursery, so it obviously spent at least a year with them, if not more, so would you consider him to be 3 years old at this point? or still just going on 2 because that is how long he has been with me? Not that it really matters all that much because when I judge them, I don't really consider their age as much as I consider their overall size and the vigor that I have witnessed under my own care. For example, I have two Jude the Obscure plants which I got last spring, both have been living in pots that are 12" across since their initial transplant. One plant was a band from from Heirloom and it was purchased earlier in the year, the other was a gallon sized plant purchased from Chamblees purchased a little later in the year. The band from Heirloom really took off and put on a lot of growth last year & is now about 3' tall, he is the one with the odd candelabra situation. Even though the Chamblees specimen was supposed to be a "gallon sized plant", he has grown much slower, but has retained more of a pleasantly round & even shape, it is a little over 1' tall. I feel comfortable pruning the Heirloom specimen because the largest cane is very thick & long, the plant is tall and seems very healthy. I would however not prune the Chamblees plant, it is still very small and looks very young at this point. I think this is due to the unusually small root ball it had upon arrival, both plants I bought from Chamblees did (the other being Molineux) which is why I probably won't be ordering from them again, they were puny as gallon sized plants and have been surpassed by every single band I purchased from Heirloom at this point.

I did prune both the roses that I mentioned in the original post, but I did it gently, not removing the entire candelabra, just a few of the smaller branches here and there, or the most awkward growth on the cane in question, so that the new growth that they put on this spring will help them evolve into more balanced, rounded shrubs. I don't have many roses large enough to prune, so these two being some of my only decent sized shrubs (3-5ft tall) I really wanted them to be presentable, even if it sets them back a tiny bit, I need something pretty to look at while I'm waiting on my herd of 1 year old gallon sized babies to mature. I really don't think it will cause them much of a problem, because as I said, almost all of my Austins have grown very quickly and vigorously so far, and I already see Jude swelling into large buds in all the places I was hoping he would, so I think he will do great this year, still waiting on MW, but I think he will do great as well. I'll try to snap some photos today.

Thanks again for all your responses!

Jessica.

Jessica, you've brought up a good point/observation about own-root versus grafted roses. A majority of my roses that I pruned young were grafted onto multiflora and took off like gangbusters. They are definitely more mature than their own-root counterparts when sold. Own-roots tend to sit and sleep longer, and in many cases don't produce anything that needs pruning for a couple of years (except for winter die-back and dead canes). You have use your judgment as to the robustness of the rose if it's ready to start pruning, but don't be afraid. I found a picture from last spring after pruning (with some bed reshaping project going on), you can see shapes of bushes better without a foot of snow on them... Most of mine are not pruned "short" but rather shaped and evened-up.

.

And here is what that bed looked like in summer...

Actually I do some light pruning with young roses, though it would be unlike me to do the drastic pruning shown in some earlier pictures on this thread. It simply is not required by my climate, and indeed, would be counterproductive here.

In their second and third years, most roses start sending up their first mature canes. As they do, I slowly start removing their twiggy juvenile growth. I don't take it off all at once, mind you, but gradually over time as more adult canes develop. I also watch for canes that rub and tear on my thornier roses so that I don't get too much cane injury. I also pay attention to how each rose grows. Some roses establish their major framework early in life, and new canes are actually laterals off those canes. Other roses continue to throw up multiple new canes from the crown all their lives long, so early training is less vital for them. And of course, many roses fall somewhere in between the two extremes, and so does the need for early training with them.

Rosefolly

Lori, your yard is gorgeous!

Yes Lori, your yard is beautiful & inspirational! And I do quite envy the amount of beautifully open space you have to play with!

I live in zone 7 like you, DH, and I have a lot of roses that look like seil's. We had an almost nonexistent winter, too. So why so many roses pruned down to almost nothing? Well, in November, before any rose in my garden was dormant, we had a very unexpected "Arctic Blast" as the weather people termed it, when the temps plummeted down to near zero for several days. That's all it took, and half my roses are down to nothing. Plus, I'm dealing with cane canker on many, I think, because of the damaged canes. Boy, I can really see the difference between the roses that can "take it" and come out green to the tips, and those that can't. Ascot anyone? That rose is made of steel, not plant material. I need to take some pics. What a horrible year for my roses. Sigh--the trials and tribs of we who grow roses. Diane