I wonder if that will disturb the blooming cycle of once-bloomers since they won't have time to store up enough energy, assuming that they don't freeze. I imagine it would be very tempting to "tidy up" so that the garden looks good. If you have fewer blooms next spring, you can hold this over him and have him do a lot of extra work!

Apologies for my ignorant question as I am still learning about once-blooming OGRs. Mine are young and I want to give them about 3 years before pruning them, but my understanding is that they flower on "old wood" and should be pruned right after their bloom is over. I would think then that, even in colder zones given that most OGRs are hardy, now (or July) should be the right time to prune them, isn't it? I personally would be happier if in my zone 5b I should be pruning them in spring because the surrounding trees are deciduous and there is much less shade in early spring for the rose buds to form. But perhaps I misunderstood something ...

What you are missing is that most pruning guides are English. So they are designed for a very different climate and style of gardening. Here, in our own little GardenWeb world, almost everyone prunes in the spring. It is easier to see what you are doing without leaves, particularly regarding winterkill. Some years I have cut back out of scale growth in July, but I usually don't bother. Ignore anyone who claims you are 'cutting off the flowers'. They are repeating book knowledge, and know little to nothing about the actual plants.

I don't think we can be accused of following English pruning guides in Sweden, as we have our own pundits. The rule here is to prune in spring but I hope my husband's present violent pruning will turn out okay even if there will be fewer flowers next year. I think my husband's idea is to prune in the JAS months, same as we prune fruit trees. We don't have the long and warm falls as you enjoy even in colder zones in US. I can only hope for the best and that it's too late for new growth.

A huge thank you, mad-gallica. I am indeed "guilty" of reading advice from the authors mostly from England, which is often valuable but surely not for zone-related questions such as the pruning time. I am so relieved because I hardly have any shade in my garden in spring until the trees leaf out in May and it's fantastic if I should prune at that time for their buds to form nicely.

And, of course, thank you so much mariannese. Your gorgeous roses and long-time experience made me wonder that I must have gotten it wrong. I hope all will be fine with your roses. I've bookmarked so many photos of your garden, they're breath-taking,

For me, there are two types of pruning behaviors. In early spring, I cut out the winter killed branches and get the rose ready for serious regrowing in the spring. As Mad Gallica says, this is easiest to do in the spring when you can see everything, and it gives the rose maximum time to recover in the growing season. If I'm going to have to prune down to the ground, early spring is the time to be doing it in my zone 5, so that I can start to have blooms in June at least late in the month.

Then there's summer pruning, which is done for a variety of reasons, but usually to reshape the rose bush. I already know that I'm sacrificing at least 6-8 weeks of blooms on those particular canes while the rose is recovering, so I tend to only do this on canes that have finished flowering, cutting them way below where I want the cane to end up. By doing this, I only cut around a third of the rose bush at a time, though the bush might get pruned within a month to as much as half of its original size by the time I'm done. Some of the canes can be blooming while others get pruned, and that's a compromise between my husband's wish for neatness and mine for bloom. I'd rather only prune a third at a time since some roses sulk when pruned and I don't want to seriously distress those roses and sometimes I can't identify the sulkers ahead of time. Rule of thumb in most woody shrub pruning is to only cut off a third of live growing canes for optimum growth, but as rose growers know we don't always get to do things the optimum way.

I always hear that we shouldn't prune or fertilize roses after July and should stop deadheading them in September so that they can stop putting out new growth or blooms and get ready for the winter. I ignore all of the above for well-established roses, though new plantings and in particular bands benefit from this treatment. I've found that my roses continue to put out new canes and new flowers entirely through October whether or not I prune, deadhead or fertilize them (and even some through November). While spring pruning prompts a burst of new growth that isn't winter hardy I don't find that roses are nearly as enthusiastic to rapidly grow new canes in the fall. Besides, even if those new canes were to die off, I'd merely be doing my spring pruning of those dead canes back to the tidy heights I selected in the fall, so I don't see it as a particular loss. I don't significantly prune any roses where I want a fall flush of blooms, since severe pruning now would cancel out all but the late October blooms for me.

For once bloomers, which I presume are a majority of the OGRs you're talking about in zone 5, there simply aren't the winter hardiness issues there would be for the fussier HTs with this kind of pruning. I tend to do my major whacking of once bloomers after the blooming cycle, pruning some of them like Variegata di Bologna and Fimbriata almost entirely to the ground so they can grow an entire season of wood to become next year's old wood and maybe have more than a few days of bloom (sigh). I did a less drastic shaping of the much better-blooming Veilchenblau this spring after bloom and she's already getting pretty scruffy. I may still prune her back further if I don't want her to be quite that big in the spring. Yes, I'm cutting off blooming canes for next spring but all the canes that grow this year are potentially blooming canes for next year (as far as I know), and if I don't want all the present canes to be that big next spring I don't see the problem. I don't think there's much worry about the new growth on these super hardy roses to be much bothered by winter, though I wouldn't do this kind of shaping pruning in October unless I had to.

I'm seriously contemplating your husband's method this weekend with my Therese Bugnet who is essentially a once-bloomer for me, though just this week she put out 3 mangy blooms at the tip top of a 10' monster bush. I've been faithfully not pruning her hoping for a rebloom and after 6 years it's just not happening, so she's going to get the same treatment as the nearby Fimbriata and see if it helps. Given her sparse week and a half of bloom it couldn't be much worse, and the bush is annoying me.

Bottom line is that I doubt your roses will suffer from the shaping pruning though you may have fewer blooming canes in spring and you might lose a few canes that sulk a bit. Just keep him away from the marginally hardy roses, but fortunately (or rather unfortunately) those roses by definition don't get big enough to need this kind of pruning anyway.

Cynthia

My first thought wasn't to worry about tender new growth, but the pruning being late enough that the wounds don't have time to heal. I've lived places where late August isn't late summer, but early fall, and winter comes equally early.

It's much later than when I did it -- and I'm in a warmer zone -- but I experimented this year with cutting back some of my once-blooming oldies rather hard. The Gallicas were pruned almost as short as Hybrid Teas typically are in early Spring, and I also stripped the foliage, which was hit harder by PM this year than in previous years. Any canes that looked like they were "shrunken" as opposed to "taut" were cut back to the mulch line. By "shrunken" I mean that if you look at the cane, it's as if the rose is sucking back the sap from it for elsewhere. My pegged 'Souvenir de Victor Landeau' canes will look like this after their second year, and it's my signal to cut them out and make room for new canes, which by comparison look "taut" or "fully-inflated".

It looked rather severe at first, but they very quickly sprouted new growth, and are almost the same size now as they were when they were blooming. Mildew also didn't return. This Spring and the following Springs, I'll just lightly shape them -- keeping them a little taller in the back center, and tapering shorter going outward and forward.

Perhaps, if your husband is focused on "tidying them up", you could tell him that he can try this next year immediately after their bloom time is finished. But that now is a little late in the season. Or....maybe it isn't? Mad_Gallica would know that better than I would.

:-)

~Christopher

Yes, the bloom time is over for the once blooming roses but because of this year's late spring and cool summer they kept blooming much longer than usual and some had flowers two weeks ago. It's been a good season for roses with no pests or diseases but not so good for humans. We've had sun but no warmth, seldom over 70F.