How To Train and Prune Climbing Roses on a Fence

Select a Structural Support

Choose a structure of appropriate height, width, and strength to support your roses. A trellis or wall around 6 x 6 feet in size, built from a fairly sturdy material (not plastic) is generally ideal. Some easy DIY options include a fence made of horizontal wires strung tightly between posts, a tall trellis supported by a house wall, or an armature screwed into masonry.

Select and Secure the Major Canes

One by one, select healthy, large stems (canes), and bend them onto the structure. Secure each cane with loosely tied pieces of fiber twine or vinyl tape. Avoid metal wires or other hard ties, which can constrict the canes and damage them.

Make the bends as sharp as possible, but take care not to crimp the canes, which will kill them. With large, thick canes, the shaping is sometimes best accomplished by gradually bending them to the desired angle over a course of several days or even weeks.

Give careful thought to the initial arrangement of the major canes, as this will form the basic structure of the plant for many years.

Secure the Secondary Canes

The way in which you select and attach the smaller secondary canes depends on your design plan. For example, if your goal is to cover a wall or chain-link fence, the secondary canes can be arranged to fill in spaces between the major canes. If you are training the rose to cover a gateway arch, on the other hand, you might choose to circle or weave the secondary canes around the major canes, creating a pillar-like effect.

Trim Excess Growth

Once you've secured the major and secondary canes, trim off any ends that extend higher or wider than your support structure, using hedge shears. You also can remove any unmanageable large canes that did not fit into your design plan.

Prune Each Spring

After the initial training of your climbing rose, subsequent maintenance will generally involve a yearly pruning each spring, as well as regular deadheading of spent blossoms.

Each year before the plant leafs out in spring, trim the rose's shoots, so only a few nodes extend past the major structural canes. Generally speaking, secondary shoots that flowered amply the previous year should be cut back by about two-thirds to promote more blooms.

Also, refasten the major canes to the structure if they have loosened. Continue to check that everything is securely fastened throughout the year, so no damage to the plant or structure occurs. Should you find that an old major cane has stopped producing, this can be removed entirely, replaced with a new cane with plenty of fresh green growth.

Deadhead Spent Blossoms

As with any flowering plant, deadheading (or pinching off) spent blooms can keep your roses fresh and lead to more flowers. The recommended method for deadheading roses is by clipping off the stem below the faded flower head at a point just above the first leaf with five leaflets. However, it can be fairly hard work to do this with a large climber, so many gardeners take the easier route of simply pinching off faded flower heads as they appear.

If your garden is expansive and the task seems too big, leaving the deadheads is rarely an eyesore. Climbing roses can be enormous plants, and a few faded blossoms are not a detraction.