Old-fashioned pruningSPRING is certainly late this year. Growth is four or five weeks behind what it was at this time last year but now we're seeing signs that it's on the way.

Several plants are producing new shoots, particularly the roses, so this week I decided to prune them.

There has been a lot of talk recently about pruning roses with hedge trimmers, just going over them and cutting off the tops. I've tried doing this in the past, using a pair of garden shears, and the results were not to my liking. They produced a lot of quite thin shoots and dead or dying branches that you would normally remove.

These were left on and so I found myself going round them again, cutting these out with the secateurs.

Call me old fashioned if you will but I still prefer to prune my roses in the normal way, cutting cleanly just above a bud, using a paid of good sharp secateurs. I started with the large-flowered (hybrid tea) ones, cutting last year's growth back down to four or five inches from the ground and removing badly-placed branches and any showing signs of disease.

When I had finished there didn't seem to be much left but before long the buds will break.

They will grow vigorously and produce good-sized flowers on strong stems.

The clustered flowers (floribunda) varieties are treated in a very similar way but I don't cut these as far back.

I leave six to eight inches above ground.

One or two of the smaller flowered ones, such as Anna Ford, only grow to around two feet high, have a very bushy habit and grow lots of stems.

These are cut back and then some of the thinner branches are removed, even though they are healthy, otherwise they become very congested in the centre.

The variety Flower Carpet, which is planted in two tubs standing on the patio, has barely been touched at all.

I have cut out an odd stem here and there and cut the ends of one or two shoots back to healthy wood but that's all.

Unlike all the other roses in the garden, these have kept most of their leaves on all winter and they sill look very healthy.

I have done a lot more thinning out on the other ground-cover roses to encourage new growth from quite low down, as some of the older wood was getting quite straggly and encroaching onto part of the garden where I didn't want them, so now they are just growing where they should be. I have spent a bit more time on the half-standard Nozomi and Ballerina and given them a really good thinning out.

I've removed a lot of the older growth and the thin weak branches, just leaving five or six evenly-spaced ones which will form the basis of this year's growth.

I have been quite ruthless with the climbers on the garage and boundary wall this year.

I've cut one or two of the old stems out completely and pruned the side growths back to within three or four buds of the main branches.

They don't look much at present but I'm sure they will soon grow and repay me with a good show of flowers during the summer.

This weekend they will all be given a feed of high potash fertiliser.

I'm hoping that the weather over the Easter weekend will be good enough to get quite a lot of work done outdoors in the garden.

So this week I'll be stocking up on fertiliser, compost and other ready for action.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.