There are as many different thoughts on how much to cut/leave as there are rosarians.

Cut high, and you get shorter, more and thinner laterals with smaller, weaker necked blooms, but more of them. Cut low, and you get fewer, thicker laterals with longer growth. The blooms are bigger and fewer when cut low. The necks are also stronger when cut low.

I prefer to cut low, across the board...hybrid teas, floribundas, grandifloras, shrubs, etc., except for once bloomers which bloom on old wood. Once bloomers are pruned immediately after blooming.

Back to why I like to cut low, in SPRING. The thicker resulting laterals that sprout from a low cut bush means thicker locations up the laterals where my deadheading cut is made later on in the season. Thicker growth always makes for more sturdiness, less weather and heavy flower issues. When you are forced to make a deadhead cut on a thin stem, the new growth will be even thinner. There comes a point of diminishing returns when you cut high.

Hope I helped.

Moses.

I do my pruning without any thought--just go at it working for a nice look. My roses are very large and I like them like that, but they still get a fairly hard prune. Don't overthink it and go with what looks good to you. Diane

I don't want floppers.....

Let me revisit the ones I have pruned and sealed and consider bringing them lower...

I see SPRING in caps........yeah, I know I should be doing this maybe a month from now

I was doing other yard stuff like winter debris leaf cleanup (which I prefer when the ground is still solid). I haven't mastered the art of blowing out beds and not removing all the mulch with it...hence I prefer when things are solid. Ha, I still managed to blow away all the mulch that wasn't frozen solid....

I just cut my roses to the whichever height I want them to be and move on. I remove all super super thin canes that look like they can’t hold a bloom unless they are very young own root plants. Cutting them all so low to the ground sounds like encouraging flopping.

a1an

6 hours ago

“Maybe I'm doing it all wrong......but does anyone not cut back *short* like they show in the videos I've seen where it's cut to like 12-16 inches off the soil on shrub roses.”

Anyone? ANYONE?

That’s not an unusual practice at all, a1an.

In fact, I bet the majority of Forum members here do not cut back as low as 12 - 16 inches from the ground on shrub roses, based on comments I've read here thru the years. No?

Having said that, I cut my circa 2000 RADrazz down to 3 inches from the ground each late winter.

I've never followed anyone else's directions for pruning, including the so called experts, nor have I watched videos about pruning. What a waste of time. And what is RADrass? Diane

A gardener I know prunes her Knock Out like an exhibition hybrid tea. Of course its bloom is still the informal Knock Out style, but the bush's growth habit is pretty nice. No coat hanger thin stems, tiny blooms, shut down during summer's heat.....no indeed. The blooms come 3-4 per stem, are large, well shaped (for a Knock Out), and the leaves are large and well spaced, giving the bush poise, rather than a jumbled crows nest look.

Faithful maintenance is the key. Timely dead heading, good care all around meeting the KO's needs, goes without saying. Takes extra time in the garden, but looks so nice. Hard to believe its a KO at first glance. It doesn't get big by season's end, just 3'x3' or thereabouts.

The Knock Outs you see in front of your local Supermarket, a jumbled mess of unfortunate creatures, can be 'tamed,' to look like they belong in a lovely garden. Plant them and forget them...they forget you, too!

Horray for Knock Outs! They have a place in 'fancy,' rose society. Their vigor and disease resistance have proven their worth, and looking at a well groomed: Double Red Knock Out, Double Pink Knock Out, White Knock Out, Blushing Knock Out, and now the new Orange Glow Knock Out, their rose garden worthiness cannot be cast aside. Some Knock Outs need to go back to the drawing board, IMHO, but the afore mentioned varieties' garden worthiness cannot be overlooked. Forget the sad, mistreated medial strip and mall parking lot gulagniks. It's not their fault that they're abused and neglected!

Moses.

I've always considered Knock Out to be a floribunda, and that it should be pruned as such. Actually, most Austins are also probably floribundas. Shrubs are something quite different, like Darlow's Enigma.

I was taught to prune Hts and Floris by budeyes. The idea is you cut the canes down to a given number, depending on your goals for the bush. It automatically compensates for a certain amount of variety differences in vigor. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I actually 'counted', so I don't remember the numbers. It's more 'that looks about right'.

Mad,

I like your approach to pruning. Makes it easy.

Moses

What are people doing here On their potted plants?

Why are they potted? I always had only very weak growers in pots, and Mutabilis. So I did very little pruning on them.

Vapor, I have >200 roses in permanent homes in 15 gallon pots. I prune the established ones like I'd prune a rose in the ground, and I do prune hard :-D

Vapor same here I prune the pots like in the ground. I have a few once bloomers this year in pots so I need to remember to not prune those