Our spell-binding display of early summer roses is sadly over so we’ll have to face their ferocious thorns and prune to prepare for next year’s performance. We can always console ourselves with the modern cultivars that keep blooming till the frosts set in as these are pruned in winter.

Both these types of rose need some attention now, especially with the unseasonal storms we’ve been enduring. One week I’m writing about droughts, the next floods. Believe me, climate change challenges gardening writers.

Before tidying up any damage sharpen the secateurs. Roses will seal over a clean cut much more quickly than a rough, uneven one giving the plant protection from pest and disease damage.

After emergency repairs to all the roses, early flowering ones need pruning now as next year’s blooms will sprout from this autumn’s fresh growth. Although pruning looks like meddling with a plant, we’re actually mimicking what it would do naturally. A plant insures itself by growing fresh stems to replace old, damaged or diseased ones. We prune to develop this natural process by shaping it more attractively and encouraging it to flower more extensively.

The greater the natural or ‘pruned’ damage, the more vigorously the plant regrows to compensate for foliage and, therefore, photosynthesis loss. So when a rose grows strongly towards the sun, prune lightly and restrict any hard pruning to a poorly growing sector where you want it to fill out.

Good pruning also takes advantage of how a rose, or many other plants, grow. It puts its resources into producing one leading stem or branch rather than several smaller sideshoots. This ‘apical dominance’ is broken when the tips of these dominant stems are broken naturally or are pruned and as a result you get many more flowering shoots.

This pruning works well with bush and hedging roses. By deciding where to cut a stem, you can also fine tune this process and force a stem to grow in the direction you want. By pruning back to outward-pointing buds, you produce a wider, more airy plant, while inward-pointing ones make the rose more bushy.

Apart from hedges, prune to allow good air circulation throughout the plant, especially with a bed of hybrid tea roses. A dense, airless mass of foliage encourages diseases like blackspot.

These pruning principles apply to climbers and ramblers. These fellas, especially ramblers, grow prodigiously every year and I’m never quite sure why I risk life and limb battling with ramblers like Paul’s Himalayan Musk or Rambling Rector every year. Ah weel, we all have our weaknesses. But when I see Pink Bouquet carpeting a garden dyke and cunningly concealing the composting area behind, I’ll face the task. Three or four good new stems emerge every year, so I identify one old branch and trace all its stems, cutting inward from their tips. The whole shrub would become hopelessly entangled without some thinning.

Fan-trained against a fence or wall, climbers, especially modern medium-sized ones, are much easier to prune than ramblers. Several strong new stems emerge every year, including one or two suitable replacements for old branches. I remove one or two of these old ones every year, tracing and cutting back stem and sideshoots. I then tie the replacement to a tall fence, carefully hooping it as horizontally as possible. This way the apical dominance is weakened and it sprouts many more flowering sideshoots than one allowed to grow vertically.

Finally, cut old flowered shoots on other branches back to their main stems, but don’t prune too close to the stem as this would damage it. Leave a small stub of no more than 1cm.

Plant of the week

Carrot ‘Rainbow Mix’ gives you deep purple, bright magenta, traditional orange, yellow and creamy white colours. The flavours vary a little with paler colours a bit milder.