Hello friends,

Rose pruning is one of those winter jobs that makes you feel as though spring is on the horizon. It's a chance to tidy up the previous season's growth, encourage healthy new shoots, and sometimes make some bigger decisions before the buds begin to burst in spring

I always begin pruning at the front of my garden, and work my way towards the backyard. As I come to each rose, I assess its health, remember how it performed over last summer, and decide whether it deserves to stay in my garden for another year. Once all those decisions are made, it's time to get to work.

I'm pleased to say that 'Cuppa Tea' rose performed very well after being planted last spring, producing strong, healthy blooms throughout the summer. With its naturally open growth habit, it didn't take long to prune into a neat vase shape, ready for another season of growth.

I'm equally as pleased with my other new rose from last year, 'Chawton Cottage'. It didn't grow as big as I hoped it would, so I'll supplement with compost and rose fertiliser this spring, and hope that it fills up the trellising at the end of the driveway this coming summer.

Three of the roses I've had for many years, 'Aotearoa', 'Happy Birthday', and 'Blackberry Nip' all continue to perform well, so all they required was some pruning to get them back into shape.

Unfortunately this wasn't the case with two other roses in the front garden 'My Girl' and 'Celebration'. Over the last couple of years they haven't performed well, and frequently get black spot and rust. Since they were taking up precious space in my front garden, I made the hard decision to pull them out and replace them.

As they were sitting side by side in the garden, and were quite far apart from each other, it gave me an opportunity to put a total of three roses in that space. The first space was set aside for my Gertrude Jekyll rose that has been the back garden for the past two years. It had gotten cramped in it's current position, so I moved it around to the front garden. I think it'll do very well in all day sun, and the space to stretch into a bigger space.

I then had two more spaces to fill in the front garden. I went shopping at our local Mitre 10 and came home with two David Austin roses, Desdemona and Eustacia Vye.

Desdemona has peachy pink buds which open to beautiful, white, chalice-shaped blooms, with a pinkish hue. It's a complex rose for me in terms of colour, and I welcome it's old world rose fragrance in the summer months.

Eustacia Vye is a pretty rose with soft, glowing apricot-pink blooms, with each flower being packed with delicately ruffled petals. She is now sitting in front of my Lucky Number dahlia with similar colouring, so I think they will go well together.

With both of these new David Austin Roses now in their new homes, the pruning of my front garden roses is now complete. I still have the back garden roses to prune, but they will get done when I do some rearranging of the backyard. I may have ordered too many new dahlia varieties over autumn and winter, and I now need to make space for them...

Have a wonderful day,

Julie-Ann

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Tags: 2026, David Austin, Desdemona, Eustacia Vye, Gertrude Jekyll, New Plants, New Roses, Rose, Rose Pruning, Roses, Winter