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I pruned the visible dead looking canes in the spring, this plant was so healthy looking when it started to leaf out, but these little white-worm looking pests started eating the leaves and thats when things changed :(

Here are the canes that have that brown center, I can just dig that sandy brown staff out...

Some cakes look nice and green, but others look like this >>

ALSO< I left some canes inches short from the ground, but some are still left on the plant like this one with the brown center...

The 2 roses were about 4' tall and beautiful, I left one with a couple of canes on them and the other one about 1' tall :(

They will probably need to be cut back till you see healthy wood in the center. As MG said, when you prune in the spring keep cutting till you get to healthy wood - those canes might grow for a while but they will eventually die back. Don’t be afraid to cut them down in the spring, they will bounce back! You may want to rake the gravel back and topdress with some wood mulch of some sort. Which roses are you growing?

I’ll just have to keep on printing I guess, I really like these roses, I got them from Home Depot and they are a hybrid Apricot Candy

Most years the type of roses that I grow need to be pruned either to the ground or close to it. It is a normal thing for us northerners.

Even If the canes are still green the inside of the cane must also be healthy or the rose will not be healthy. Don’t be afraid to prune until the inside of your cane is a nice white to apple green color. Let me also share that some times it is so cold that a rose may die from the cold. I lost a huge Pink Enchantment this winter.

I should also add that if your roses are grafted the graft must be buried underground when you plant them. Or heavily protected in order to survive winter. Many northerners lose their roses over winter because they are unaware. I wish you good luck with your rose.

This is a very common occurrence in my yard. All of my roses get winter damaged and need to be pruned back. Most of them to the ground, a handful to about 12-24 inches. On the plus side of doing this in early spring is to avoid later die-off of unhealthy canes & it will give you much nicer bush shapes. Your roses may not be as tall, but they will look fuller and healthier. Your rose in the photograph looks a bit spindly. A hard prune will really help. Which is hard to do once you start getting growth and blooms. A healthy rose will rebound quite quickly once the weather warms up. Good luck!

In your defense, I've done the same thing. I've left canes that looked perfectly healthy when I spring pruned. However, by June they've started to die off. Sometimes there is hidden winter damage. A cane will look OK but suffered winter kill and stayed green and didn't turn black. It happens. Just prune off those canes now and let the rose grow back. In the end you'll have a better rose.

Perfect illustration of the point that canes can look healthy on the outside and be gone inside. I left Heritage pretty high last year, as I had noticed it didn’t like it when I pruned it low. It looked like there was hardly any winter damage. I went on holiday for most of May, and came back to this. So a low pruning it became...