Caring For Your Climbing Roses
Climbing roses need different care than bush-style roses—especially during the summer growing season. Below, I’ll share exactly what we do to support, shape and deadhead our climbing roses so they can continue growing and blooming throughout the summer. You’ll see how we gently direct those long, wild canes, secure them without an obtrusive trellis and encourage the plant to put its energy into fresh growth and new flowers. I’ll also walk you through where to cut when deadheading, how to fertilize, and explain when the right time for heavy pruning is.
If you need some visuals, join me in creating the loveliest garden space in the Youtube Video above!
How to train climbing roses to grow where you want
Climbing roses are unique to other climbing plants and can’t grab onto a structure without your help. Your climbing roses also require different care from season to season so they can thrive throughout each one.
During the summer, your main job is to give the climbing rose really good support, and to shape and direct where it’s going. Summer is when your climbing rose puts on the most growth, so this is the best time to train it.
A few rose training tips:
Let the fresh rose canes grow in height until they are tall enough to direct wherever you want them to go by tucking them into the larger plant. Tie off the new cane to the already established main plant
DO NOT prune your climbing rose during summer! Let it grow, grow, grow. Blooms only appear on new growth, so this is absolutely crucial to the health of your plant during bloom season.
The trickiest time to care for a climbing rose is when it’s freshly planted. I like to use plant anchors to get it to grow upwards instead of flopping to the side.
How we use discreet plant anchors and twine
Plant anchors are your best friend when training a climbing rose. I’ll link my favorite set below so you can check them out! The plant anchor set I use comes with rubber cement, anchors and wire so you can anchor your plant to any surface with no issues! Just cement the anchor to your fence, wall, or shed and tie off the plant with some twine or string as it grows. I like to use twine to tie off my rose because it’s slightly hardier than string but still thin and discreet.
You don’t have to leave your twine on the plant forever, just until the rose has established itself more and doesn’t flop over without support.
Remember when anchoring that it is JUST to direct your climbing rose. Make sure during the growing season you are only directing and not doing any deep pruning - let that plant go wild so you’ll have lots of blooms! Save pruning for the springtime, right before its biggest flush of growth.
How and where to deadhead spent roses
While you shouldn’t do any deep pruning to your rose during the summer, deadheading is great for your rose. Cutting off those spent blooms allows the plant to put more energy into putting on new growth and fresh blooms, instead of focusing on developing seeds (or rosehips) before the summer is over.
Cut right behind the spent bloom head, above the newest leaf set.
When to allow rose hips to develop
Let your rose die back during whatever ‘fall’ is for your growing season. Here in the Pacific Northwest, that is usually around late September into early October. Rose hips are great to leave on your plant during the winter - the rose hips tell the plant that it’s the right time to go dormant for the off season, hence why you don’t want them on your plant through the summer and early fall!
How we fertilize our roses during the growing season
We like to use BioAdvanced All-in-One fertilizer on our rose plants. We fertilize once each month of the growing season and give our plants that extra boost that keeps black spot and pests away. Shake the granules around the base of the plant and work into the soil. Fertilizer releases as rose is watered.
Let’s get out into our gardens and dig into beauty! Here’s a list of our favorite climbing rose tools so you can anchor, fertilize and create the loveliest garden space:
Our favorite climbing rose tools:
🌼 Plant Anchors: https://amzn.to/4dJBs9h
🌱 Rose Fertilizer: https://amzn.to/4ahu0BF
🌸 Our Garden Essentials list: https://amzn.to/42GQ2YZ
Here's to making memories around your table and in your garden! If you're loving cooking and filling your table be sure to check out our cookbooks, Dinner Changes Everything and Red Tin Treats ECookBook, and our Garden Planning Guide. It is amazing what happens when you turn your space into a beautiful tool to gather your people!
🪴 Just starting your own garden or looking for some more tips on how to make your space thrive? Here’s our full garden playlist on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfPIhWGHaEXGqhkGZlH7FJOwVqSAiDZvA
Our backyard table…
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