Excerpt from The National Rose Society's Handbook on Pruning RosesHE following general directions and explanations should be carefully read before proceeding to carry out the instructions afterwards given, or the reader may fail to grasp the meaning they are intended to convey. The late Rev. A. Foster-melliar in his Book of the Rose pointed out that the necessity for pruning arises in a great measure from the natural growth of the Rose. By watching, he said, an unpruned Rose-tree, either wild or cultivated, it will be found that the first strong shoot ?owers well the second season, but gets weaker at the extremity in a year or two, and another strong shoot starts considerably lower 'down, or even from the very base of the plant, and thus soon absorbs the majority of the sap, and will eventually starve the original shoot and be itself thus starved in succession by another. A Rose in a natural state has thus every year some branches which are becoming weakened by the fresh young shoots growing out below them. This is one of the principal reasons why pruning is necessary. A Rose is not a tree to grow onwards and upwards, but a plant which in the natural course every year or two forms fresh channels for the majority of the sap, and thus causes the branches and twigs above the new shoots to diminish in vitality. This being the case, in order to maintain the strength of the plant and to keep it in the shape required, the worn-out shoots must each year be cut away, and the rest either left their entire length or shortened back to a greater or less extent as the nature of the variety, or the object for which the plant is grown, may require. Pruning, therefore, is the art of improving the productive power, or the appearance, of the plant, and consists of two distinct operations. 1. The removal of dead, weak, overcrowded, or otherwise useless, shoots. 2. Pruning proper, the shortening of those shoots which are allowed to remain after the thinning out process has been completed.
