I am in Colorado, about 50 miles north of Denver. My mulberry trees were here when I moved in 12 years ago. They were large then, 25 ft at least, Four trees covered a large area of our yard. We have removed all but One now, and are considering taking that one out as well. My concern is that, as stated above, the birds and squirrels love them. To anyone wanting to know why grow a mulberry, that is the answer. They totally ignore the cherry tree right next to them. I would love to keep them in some form, but don't have room for the large tree. I have potted up a few of the seedlings and am going to try them as bushes. Wish me luck.

Maureen, I dropped the ball on this one and completely forgot to reply to your email the other day. Please forgive my slip up. I'll put my reply here. My Veilchenblau is a baby, trapped in a pot, so I don't have experience with this exact rose in this situation. If you are not getting basal canes, this will make your Veilchenblau a bit easier to train, IMO. It appears to be a matter of removing canes that are out of bounds and don't fit the building, instead of removing old canes to make room for new canes. Here's a mark up I did on your photo to show what I mean. These are the canes that I would consider removing. The one on the left is going off on its own, and so is the one on the right. The ones in the center are crowded and should be thinned a bit. My objective was to remove about 1/3 of what you have ... depending on your esthetic, you may want to remove more or less. A woody base on an old rambler can be a thing of beauty. A rose friend of mine has an old Reve d'Or with a gorgeous trunk. You can aim for this as you train your Veilchenblau, only removing canes that don't contribute to your overall objective. Your City of York is much more straight forward. It looks like you have WAY too many canes here. Take out a few, starting with the oldest, IMO, and take stock of what you have left after each cane is removed. While I was pruning my Aviateur Bleriot, I had a number of really tough decisions to make. This rose hadn't been pruned in three years, and it was a haystack ... growing in all directions. I was determined to get him back on the fence, so I cut off every cane that was old, bloomed out, or was too stiff to make it onto the fence. What I had left was a motley pile of rose ... which I reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle into what I hope will be a nice show when spring comes. (This was a lot more drastic than I wanted. It seemed necessary, considering the mess I had when I started.) Does this make sense?

Let's see how well I can answer these questions without going on TOO long. Pruners? My favorite one are Felco #6, which were given to me as a gift. They're comfortable, easy to maintain and sharpen, and I can cut just about anything with them. One thing I failed to mention is the importance of a good pair of gloves. My best ones for pruning like this are made of deerskin ... they are soft and flexible and tough as any gloves out there. Rarely does a thorn make it through a good pair of deerskin gloves. Old wood, for me, is defined as the canes that grew last year or before. Sherry, your Francois Juranville was probably too young to have much old wood last spring. If he were mine, I would let the portion that goes over the arch and into the tree do whatever it wants to do. (That's what I'm planning to do with my American Pillar) Any parts that you want to keep within reach can be trained my way. Jeri, feel free to link to any of my blog posts that you think will be of interest to HRG readers. I'm flattered. Melissa, Leontine Gervais is probably my favorite rambler. Her lax canes are a dream to train, and she rewards the care by blooming her butt off in spring. Sammy, any climber can be pruned using my principles. All it really involves is the removal of old or bloomed out wood and arranging what's left. Don't be afraid to cut out a cane to open up space for new growth. I do the same thing for the climbers on my Arcade, except I spiral the remaining canes upward around the posts. I'm still working out a system that works for me to train roses to an arbor or an arch. I mostly just put the canes wherever, and hope for the best. (With your no-spray garden, you MUST grow ramblers!!!) buford, I've seen photos of your Teasing Georgia, and I would be inclined to keep it to a limited number of relatively new canes to help reduce the mass. Years ago, my husband bought me a Max Tapener (a vineyard tool) to use to attach rose canes to their support. It allows me to work by myself and makes very short work of tying climbers. I linked below to a post where I demonstrated how to use it. I used jute twine before this. The twine is natural, and it will disintegrate in a year or two ... just about the time you'll need to take the rose down and tidy it up. maureen, City of York on an arbor?? Wow! That's going to take some work. With your Veilchenblau, you can do what Robert does with his Cl. Cecile Brunner, which kept blowing off the roof of his chicken house. He keeps it up there by tying the canes to cinderblocks on the roof. It hasn't blown off since. elemire, setigeras are the focus of my newest interest, and I grow them in a different part of the garden. I grow Arcata Pink Globe, Himmelsauge, and Geschwind's Nordlandrose (which are good here). I thought I had Baltimore Belle, but it turned out to be identical to my Arcata Pink Globe. Errinnerung an Brod hasn't done well, and I will probably remove it this summer, along with a few other Geschwind roses. I am very excited to grow a Pennsylvania-found setigera that was given to me by a friend this spring. Most setigeras are American roses, and they are underappreciated and disappearing. My disappointing Geschwind roses will be replaced on their fence with setigeras. All of my ramblers would probably be ground cover if I let them. Each of the ramblers has had basal canes crawl across the bed and out to the grass beyond, only to be chewed off by the lawn mower. Paul Lede, Cl., is beautiful when in bloom. My plant had a difficult time this past summer, with a combination of heat, drought, and fungus that made it practically leafless by mid-summer (I wasn't too diligent with my fungicide.) Despite this, I got a really nice repeat bloom from him in September and October. In the part of two days that I spent pruning, The only roses I have left to do now are Paul Transon, American Pillar, and Silver Moon. A friend was here while I was working on Alberic Barbier, and he and I worked on opposite sides of the fence, which cut the time we spent on this rose at least in half. It was great to have a trained eye to assist with this, because we communicated well and AB looks great! My goal with this is to convince rose growers that ramblers aren't nearly as scary as they imagine them to be ... and the rewards of growing them are beyond compare. Whew. Connie Here is a link that might be useful: Post on the tool I use to attach roses to structure

Glad to help! If you're happy with how the rose looks there's not usually a wrong way to do such things. In my yard, I probably am not as enthusiastic about cutting my laterals way back unless they're actively annoying me, since I want to keep the laterals as the blooming canes when convenient. I just bend those laterals sideways like I bend the main cane sideways, and then the laterals put out more laterals that put out more laterals...and the climber starts building that fan shape. You don't have to do that, but it helps increase the blooming over time. Those skinny lateral canes will fatten up if you leave them, rather than making that cane start over to produce new blooming canes. Not wrong to remove them if they bug you, but there's a tradeoff in blooming profusion and frequency. I also don't cut back canes where the leaves are unsightly since you want maximum canes to support more leaf and bloom development. If you can't stand the sight of the leaves it's OK to remove them, but the plant still benefits from the leaves even if there are holes. There's some sort of formula for maybe 35 leaves to support one bloom to keep in mind to increase blooming. Not set in stone of course, but I like to leave as many healthy canes and tolerable leaves as possible when pruning. Sounds like you did a great job getting things tidied up. Having a garden that brings you joy is part of the point of the activity and it sounds like you were getting tired in a good cause. Cynthia