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Pruning 'Cecile Brunner'

Bluebelle_Riverina

21 years ago

Any suggestions for keeping this one under control? I have three Cecile Brunner roses (Spray Cecile Brunner I suppose - grown from cuttings, I'm not sure of their ancestry). They are covered with leaves at the moment and are very "thick" bushes about one and a half metres high. Last spring they threw up some very long shoots which I cut back to match the rest of the bush after flowering. How should I prune and when?

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Comments (11)

lozza
21 years ago
Check www.reliableroses.com.au for directions on pruning.
varmi
21 years ago
This year I shall use my electric hedge trimmer. Will tidy the thicker branches.
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Can you please tell what kind this Cecil Brunner is, most of the time it blooms twice, it just finished blooming now and it is June 15th, and I would like to prune it as it is huge and I don't want it to out grow the arch way on the deck. So do you prune it right after it stops blooming? Thank you for your HELP!
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Peachymomo, it could be done, but Jackie is on the right track that it's going to take a whale of a lot of maintenance to keep it that way. There are many growth buds in the crown of that plant and each cane has many of their own. For your goal, I would suggest taking a suitable cutting, removing all growth buds from it except the top soft tip, rooting it so it will grow as a continuous, single piece. As it grows taller, remove the buds along the trunk until it reaches the height you desire, then hack off the top. You'll have to frequently shape the head or it will get away from you, but at least you'll have a trunk without many side branches and all the "sucker" growth from the base of the plant. Kim
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Pruning an old woody trunk on Cecil Brunner?
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I am awestruck by your rose in your slideshow. I did grow the cl Cecile Brunners in both Houston and New Orleans. In Houston, it went from my side yard over our joint brick wall and tried to eat a neighbor's patio while they were on vacation. That one never approached the age of yours. The second one came with our house in Algiers Point and had the gnarly woody look of yours. It was growing in between the slab of our craftsman house and the very thick slab of cement that had been a driveway to the back yard. That space was about two feet wide. A workman took initiative and cut the rose back to eight inches above the ground. I thought it was gone. It came back as if it didn't notice the indignity of the major pruning in midsummer. I tell you this in case you worry about the strength of your leviathon. You might want to gently remove some of the loose bark where you want to spur new growth. Working in organic fertilizer is small amounts might also spur growth. Working with the soil would seem to me to be the direction where you'd be more likely to see a cause and effect on such a massive rose. Simply great slide show!
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Genetic drift in roses is quite common, and CB is no exception, that's why we have upright shrub CB, Cl CB, Rita Sammons, various "Sweetheart" roses, etc. Sometimes later clone lines may be infected with RMV, which could account for the difference in vigor. There are other possibilities, too... had, say, someone noticed a seedling 100 years ago which was CB x self, which was true to type, would we be able to tell if it had found its way into commerce as CB, even if (stricty speaking) it wasn't? Whatever the explanation is, I'm sure that you know which one you'll want to take cuttings from.
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Thrip
21 years ago
Simple. If your not worried about pruning it away from something else or greatly reducing it's size for any reason just
(a)Cut off dead or senile wood low down
(b)Remove spent sprays
(c)Tidy up anything untidy
This process will leave you with a bush only minimumly reduced in size which is ideal for this class of rose.
MrThrip
blacknwhitemob
21 years ago
Chainsaw!!! Vrooooooooooooom!! Bzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!
Thrip
21 years ago
blacknwhitemob?
Your a dairy farmer who runs a herd of freisians by any chance?
lozza
21 years ago
No, that would be Blacknwhite herd.
blacknwhitemob
21 years ago
That reminds me Loz ol fella, next time yer going past you will have to do a positive on our cl CB, been in 20 years so maybe it is, maybe it aint. I presume it is the real mccoy.
annabel__WA
21 years ago
Pete recommend removing one old growth per year on climbers, so I am going to try that. He also said not to remove the new long canes as that was where the flowers would be.
Lynne1
21 years ago
Well I chain sawed mine, leaving 3 new long shoots, I can have a bonfire with the rest, didnt prune it last year and it has been hugging all who pass, wonder why they dont appreciate that? Magpies are breeding early this year up here, how is it elswhere?
Snodge
21 years ago
Nothing obvious here yet...but then the only time I really notice is when there's little dead chicks or blue egg shells lying around the yard. Guess from currawongs or maggies or something getting stuck into the ferals. Hope so.
Last year the Blue wrens bred in the garden, but I didn't notice till the chicks had left the nest and we're begging parents for food sitting around in the garden.
Bluebelle_Riverina
Original Author
21 years ago
Thanks everyone. As I don't have an electric hedge trimmer and our chainsaw is too heavy for me to lift, I attacked them with the secateurs and lond handled loppers. I was ruthless, but then they hadn't been pruned last year as I was put off by all the green growth. Now they've got plenty off chance to grow again, and the snow ball tree that is probably growing too close to them has a chance to breathe. Who knows what I'll do next year!

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