Pruning climbing rose, what do I do?

pnwalsh

I have a "Generous Gardener" climbing rose that I planted last spring. It grew well and in mid summer a vigorous stem started to climb the arch rapidly along with a bushy base. I'm not sure what I need to do now with regard to pruning. Do I leave the tall stem and prune out the smaller ones or do I cut back the vigorous stem and leave the smaller bushy base, or do I leave it to it's own devices. Help please!

Marlorena

The way I grow this rose is to generally leave it to its own devices at this stage... keep tying in the canes - they're rather stiff at the top - to the arch, but I leave on all the bushy growth at the base as I want flowers lower down too... if you cut those off you will have bare stems all the way down.. you want to encourage flowers lower on the plant as well.. so allow those lower canes to gradually make their way upwards..

In an ideal situation, that very tall cane that it threw up, would be better to train at an angle, so you get shoots appear further down, but that isn't possible with your support structure, so just leave it be..

pnwalsh

Thank you for your advice. I will leave it to it's own devices then. Fortunately, it sounds like I haven't pruned anything that I shouldn't have done.

Marlorena

That's ok.. no worries.. I just zoomed in on your photo and if you want to be really fussy, what you can do, and you would probably have to get on a ladder, is to snip off those dead little short side shoots that I can see near the top of your plant, as it's going over the green part of the arch.. they are about 6 inches long, and do not have any leaves on them.. it's just dead growth sticking out... normally we would just snip those off back to the main cane, just to tidy up the plant... I hope you see what I mean...

pnwalsh

Thanks again... I guess this relates to the 3 D's Rose pruning rule which is the only bit that I undersatnd. It's a bit daunting  because if I prune something I shouldn't I can't stick it back! 

Marlorena

Oh I know what you mean... if in doubt - leave..  the rose won't care too much...