Nope, never have and probably never will. I thought about it when the teas and chinas were small but now that they're grown and most are over 6 feet tall it's hard enough to keep them pruned. Maybe if I had only a few roses I could strip the old leaves but with almost 100 it's hard to keep up with the other things that need doing, I stay behind.
Hamp

I strip all the leaves that I can get to. That means the large climbers are not done. I do this at the same time I am doing my winter pruning. I like to create a 'dormancy' to give the bushes a chance to sleep.

Carol

No stripping in this garden. I collected and planted teas to have a carefree garden. Beds are cleaned of weeds an old leaves then feed and mulched each spring...that is the extent of care. However, mine have gotten so big in several years that some trimming may be required to walk around in the garden. I started shovel pruning anything that didn't grow well last year so maybe the ones left will be survivers.

It depends on how nasty they look and how bad it bugs me :-).

Carol

I'm with Carol. If the leaves are ruining the look of my roses I get rid of them, otherwise I can't be bothered; who's got time to strip thousands of leaves? (Obviously people who are harder workers than I am).

Ingrid

Thanks so much for the responses; I really appreciate it.

For those of you that let the leaves stay, do you think that the overwintering leaves increase bs or fungal diseases in general through the spring and summer? That's really my concern, not the look of the leaves, just the amount that bs may increase because of it.

I'm just trying to feel my way through this first year of not spraying ... and Alabama is a wet and warm kind of place. Thanks so much for your input.

I've heard that if you use lime sulphur spray in a dormant strength it will make all remaining leaves drop. I tried that this year, but I don't think I had the right concentration. This will also help kill the bs spores on the bush/ground.

I do think leaving old leaves on can contribute to disease. I had many roses that did not lose their leaves and they became diseased and it did spread to new leaves.

Jeri said something about 'senile tissue' being more susceptible to disease.

If your leaves are green and disease free why would you need to defoliate the bush? I understand removing infected leaves and the need for cleaning up the blackspot leaves, removing canes that are covered in blackspot and such as that, but if your foliage is disease free I don't see the need for it. If the foliage is just "old" then the emerging new growth will push those old leaves off. If the foliage is clean/green, I leave it alone. I don't think it really matters to the health of the plant if you choose to remove all of the (still clean) foliage in the early spring or leave it. It's a personal preference and I have seen it done both ways with good results. I already have way too much to do in the spring :-)

Bet, I tried the lime/sulfur at dormant strength a couple of years in a row and it didn't completely defoliate the roses and it looked really, really bad out there for a while.

Carol

I do not strip leaves. I let mother nature do her thing and besides, I like looking at the green of my roses in the dead of winter when everything else is bare. I will prune if they look like they need a little shaping.
Liz

No, no, no don't strip leaves if they don't need it. Just strip them if they look crappy or either let Mother Nature strip them. Plants need all their "green" pigment (chlorophyll). Don't encourage that loss. Poor plants. Naked. Who's laughing? Long-legged nude green people shivering in winter.

I used to cut them off. Now that is entirely impractical. I will remove last year's leaves on those occasions when I prune the plant, which is not every year. I have seen absolutely no ill effects from doing so, and it does avoid that cross-over season, when the new foliage grows in and the old foliage drops off. The plants look awful for those several weeks.

I used to hit the roses with two applications of winter strength LimeSulphur in part to make them drop their leaves. This had to be done before the leaf buds started to swell.
I don't know that it helped. I did get leaf drop, including on Fortuniana which (like its parent laevigata) likes to grow actively through winter.
But I also got some cane scalding due to sunburn. (Remember the orchardists' choice of painting trunks of other member of Rosaceae white to stop another kind of winter damage.)
Now, if we could get to it, I'd concentrate on gettin LS on the canes. The leaves WILL take care of themselves.

No, it's the anecdotal information I'm interested in. I'm just stepping into the water, so to speak and am just looking for the alligators. This is probably why newby-dom lasts for ten years; have to try everything to see what is going to work. I always appreciate the help with the learning curve.

Thanks for all comments.

carla, the problem I had is if I left any leaves on and didn't continue to spray, I'd get blackspot. Even one or two warm days would do it. And then the dang things wouldn't fall off but be hanging there all yellow and spotty and it drove me crazy.

I think we need a few good winter storms to blow all the leaves off. Problem is we are getting them in the spring when everything is blooming.

Hmmm, move to Alabama. We can promise a few twisters in December, January and February. Could be why I don't have to strip, you think? :) Well, I would just as soon not have that because the last one here in February took out over half my burb.

Well we did have that one twister downtown, but that didn't help me :) Hail doesn't work quite as well.