What color were the roses when they bloomed? If they were a darkish red small flower, this is a rootstock rose Dr. Huey. It's a rose that other roses have been grafted into, and if the desired rose dies then Dr. Huey is left. There's little you can do to make Dr. Huey less scruffy, and he only blooms once a year. Most of us simply dig him up and plant something else (making sure to get all of the root - he's a survivor).

If the blooms were another color, you may have climbing roses growing on the fence and pruning them back both delays their bloom and may make them sulk for a year. The best thing you can do for climbers is get the canes to grow as horizontally as possible along this fence (usually you need to tie them sideways to the fence with garden ties or old panty hose strips) or weaving the canes back and forth sideways if they're flexible enough. Ideally, you want climber canes to grow like a fan against the fence, and the best blooming canes will be those that grow vertically off these horizontal canes (we call these laterals). You can also pull the laterals sideways and they'll usually sprout more laterals for more blooms. If you let a climber grow straight up, it'll usually only have a few scruffy blooms way at the top, and that's what it sounds like you have.

If you want roses more at normal 3-4' heights, you can plant the shrub roses of your choice in front of these climbers, since the base of the climber doesn't take up all that much room once attached to the fence. If you don't want roses climbing on the fence you can try this method for a year to see if they are indeed climbers, then if you don't like the look you'd dig them up and plant something that wants to stay shorter. When you have a rose that really wants to grow that tall in zone 5, it's probably a climber, particularly if it's spindly rather than a fountain type shape. You can gently redirect roses from their preferred height, but a climber won't be happy consistently pruned down to 3'.

Of course I could be wrong and these are simply large unpruned roses - sometimes once-blooming old garden roses can get this big, and you won't get any bloom in the year if you prune that kind of rose in the spring either. Pictures always help, but none of the roses I can think of would mind being trained horizontally like this if they get that big.

Cynthia

In order to give you any advice we need to know what kind of roses you have. Please wait until they are blooming in the Spring, and then post pictures of the blooms, buds, and entire bushes. We will then be able to figure out what type they are, and give you advice accordingly - different types of roses act completely differently, which I realize you would never know from the "standard" rose advice and info that it out there.

jackie

I would not have pruned the entire bush down to 3', rather I would have done "renewal" pruning where you remove 1/4 to 1/3 of the old canes at ground level & left the remaining canes their full height. Below is a link to a Paul Zimmerman Youtube video showing this process on a climbing rose.

Here is a link that might be useful: Zimmerman video

It's also possible that you just have large shrub roses such as the hybrid musk class which will easily grow 6-8 feet tall and cannot and should not be pruned like hybrid teas or floribundas. Their beauty is in their large size with many flowers blooming all over them. Many of them repeat bloom, although not always as abundantly as during the spring bloom.

Jackie is right; we need to see close-ups of the blooms and the habit of the whole plant. At this point we don't know whether they're climbers or shrubs, or once-blooming or repeat-blooming roses. I really wouldn't prune them any more until you (hopefully) have some blooms. It wouldn't hurt to fertilize them in order to coax them into blooming.

Ingrid

If these are once-a-year blooming old garden roses when you pruned them way down last spring you cut off all of your potential bloom for that season. The growth it put back on the rest of last season will have your bloom for this season on it. Do not cut them down this spring. Wait for them to bloom and take photos of them, the blooms, leaves, thorns and whole plant, and post them so we can help ID them. It sounds like these are large shrubs, ramblers or climbers and they want to be that big. Some types of roses need to have that large amount of twiggy growth to do well. Until we know what you have it's hard to give you any specific advice.

Wow, thanks for all the responses!!

My only experience with roses is a small knockout rose bush that I had in North Carolina, and that one was quite easy to deal with, so I am a bit naïve.

I found a tag under one of the roses. It is a John Cabot Canadian Explorer Climber Rose described as having a height of 8-10' (!) and width of 3-4 ft. Here's a picture of that one. It is one of the (relative to the others) medium-sized bushes.

.....some of the rose bushes have thin, darker stems with sparsely-spaced thorns (left) and some have thicker, light green stems covered in thorns (right).

....and here's the largest one (5' fence in background). It had just a couple of white flowers and then didn't bloom any more the rest of the season. This one has the darker, narrower stems with sparsely-spaced thorns like on the left in the previous photo.

I know that photos of the plants when they are dead in winter are not super-helpful, but perhaps someone could tell me what category this huge white-flowered one might fall into? (climbing? shrub? etc....). Here is a close-up of it's top branches. I think I remember the flowers looking similar to the John Cabot ones, but white.

Thanks again!

Ok, after some sleuthing, I think the white one is probably a hybrid musk rose, Darlow's Enigma.

What should I do, if anything, with the Darlow's Enigma bushes and the John Cabot climbers this winter/spring?

You appear to have a very active Rose Society in your area. Below is a link to some info that they have on rose growing. Notice they have a upcoming March class on rose pruning, just the right time for you to learn about pruning your roses.

Here is a link that might be useful: Denver Rose Society

This post was edited by wirosarian on Mon, Jan 26, 15 at 14:18

Thank you, wirosarian! I will definitely check out the rose society!

Lily, are you familiar with the on-line resource helpmefindroses.com? If you put in the name of the rose it will tell you all about that particular rose with many photos under the Photograph section. The two roses you mention are both very good roses. Large roses like these often take a few years to mature, and Darlow's Enigma in particular should give you a wealth of blooms after it's older. I think you'll enjoy these roses very much once you figure out how to deal with them. Yours are already a good size so it shouldn't take much longer for them to really take off.

Ingrid

Last winter was cold so long and the spring was cold that most gardens did not have that many roses on some plants. The cold went right into it being too hot. Then too much rain. Hopefully this year will be better.

Last winter was cold so long and the spring was cold that most gardens did not have that many roses on some plants. The cold went right into it being too hot. Then too much rain. Hopefully this year will be better.

Ingrid, thank you for the website suggestion, and Sam, thank you for the weather info. Our neighbors here had beautiful roses, so in my case I'm thinking it was my excessive pruning :/

Cynthia, thank you so much for the detailed info about these varieties and pruning and climbing supports!! And thanks for the picture!

The fence with the roses faces SSW, so I think that the roses get full sun, except for the ones that are partly blocked by the chokecherry tree.

I really appreciate all the help! :)