subject: Renovation Pruning [print this page] Overgrown and unproductive climbers can be given a new lease of life by hard pruning. The method you use will depend on the type of climbers you are tackling. If your climbers have got out of control or produce all their flowers out of sight at the top of the plants, you may need to take decisive action. The best time to carry out drastic pruning of climbers is during the dormant season, between autumn and spring. When there are no leaves it is easier to see what you are doing and make the cuts in the right place.
Choose a mild day to make the task as pleasant as possible and arm your self with a good pair of pruning equipment and long handled loppers. For stems over one inch thick you will also need a special pruning saw. Clematis are often left unpruned for year so that the climber end up as a mass of bare, non flowering stems at the base with the few blooms produced way up on top. All clematis respond well to pruning back hard, cut back stems to within three feet of the ground. Those that flower on new wood can be cut back even harder, to twelve inches.
If your clematis flowers on old wood, you will not get any blooms for a year or two, but thereafter the climber will flower with renewed vigor. If they are neglected climbing roses slowly get bigger and bigger, forming large gnarled bare stems at the base with the flowers produced on growth higher up on the plant. Tackle an overgrown monster by removing one stem in three back to a newer shoot lower down or cut right back to the base if there is not one. Repeat over a three year period to reinvigorate the plant completely.
Rambler roses by contrast throw up new shoots from the base, and these form impenetrable thickets of thorny growth if left to their own devices. In this case, thin out the tangle of stems by removing all but the newest shoots. These often form a top heavy mass of spindly shoots, and when they are grown on free standing supports and fences they tend to catch the wind and rock the support. The best way to tackle an overgrown honeysuckle is to trim back all the thin growth on the top to reveal the main stems. These can then be pruned with the pruning equipment.
