This does not address all you asked about

https://palatineroses.com/pruning-your-palatine-roses

The rose he worked on looks like it is in better shape after winter than yours ( and mine).

I would like to see a video of Rene pruning a rose like the one in your photos.

These are all really interesting questions prairiemoon, and I'm looking forward to hearing what people say. As a relative newbie rose grower, I'm afraid now that I've been pruning too hard...as opposed to the mistake people often make of pruning not enough...especially my Hybrid Teas.

Hybrid Teas tend to look so gnarly...it's hard to know which canes are healthy and which aren't. In my climate, nothing dies back, so I have to make the desicion about what stays and what goes. Often, if I prune out everything that looks old or diseased there won't be much left!

How do you prune well, and yet allow the bush to achieve some size? I've always heard that roses store energy in their canes...but then there are some climates where the roses die to the ground every year, yet still grow to a large size by the end of the season.

Sorry...I've been no help! :)

Prairiemoon, it does seem like pruning season is getting earlier. In the past, I tried not to start before Mar 15 in my zone, but this year, I started the first week in March, and I'm still at it. Most of my roses needed a fairly hard prune. The ones that were pruned more lightly were pruned harder last year, or the year before. But no rose of mine escapes the pruners (actually, I have a monster Ascot that wasn't pruned last year, but I was recovering from surgery). I grow three Julia Child roses--two monsters grown here since 2006, and a third Julia which is about four years old and own root. The monsters were just out of control and blocking the sidewalk and the poor guy (son in law) who does the mowing. My Julias also leaf out really early, so when I took them down, I had to cut off lots of leaves. It took two afternoons and four garbage cans to handle their canes. I also hard pruned the leafed newer Julia, which is a slower grower, so it is not as large. You have done a good job, but I cut off some of the smaller side shoots that you have left on. No big deal. I aim for a good shape, which with Julia is easy to achieve. The big ones had lots of thick, senile canes that I pruned off--and that was hard to do. So, all I can say, is you might cut off a few of the little side shoots at the top right of your Julia to achieve a nice rounded shape at the top of the plant. But, if you choose not to, it's not going to make much difference. I think your plant will look terrific when she blooms, and you should share some photos with us. The photo below is from 2019, and I've posted it before (sorry), but it illustrates how much I had to prune these to big girls. They are going to be smaller this year (I think-ha). Diane

Prairiemoon

I think you did a nice job pruning, I pruned my JC about the same.

Diane,

How tall is your Julia after pruning?

They are about 4-5 feet tall, down from over 6 feet. But the real take down was in width. The one on the right was about 9 feet wide, and now about 5 feet wide. Diane

Very helpful to get so many replies so quickly since I have more roses to do too.

I should have posted a before photo but I didn’t think of it.

Thanks, riffs, I watched that video from Palatine Roses, which is actually where I bought 3 of mine last season. It was nice and short, and I had to laugh at how fast he did it. First with the lopers and then he cut them probably half the height I left mine and ended up with a lot fewer canes than I did.

Rosylady - here in zone 6, I’ve had to cut mine back hard lots of years. It never hurts them, but I do always hope to end up with a larger shrub and not sure how you do that in the north.

Diane - what zone are you in?

I remember your Julia Child roses - gorgeous! So nice and full. They look like they are on steroids. [g]. I think I am going to go back and take off a little more. Some of the thinner canes too.

Thanks Ben, I just measured - it stands at 4ft tall and about 3.5ft wide.

Here are photos from Julia Child blooming last year.

I have three from Palatine from last year. Pope John Paul, that really doesn't look like it came through the winter very well. Savannah and Beverly. They are all in their second year now. Beverly looks good and again, it had new growth high up, so I left it tall. It has fewer canes so I didn't cut any out. I thought I should let them grow this year rather than pruning hard.

Savannah, I really enjoyed last season, but toward the end of the season, one or two of the canes looked diseased. The rest of the shrub looked good and bloomed well, so I just left it. Now I see a cane that has no new growth on it and I think that is the bad one, so I'm going to take that back to the ground. The other canes, I think I should cut back harder?

And PJP - I think I should cut that back hard.

Any thoughts?

Thanks, prairiemoon. Your Julia looks great in the photos, so lush and healthy. I'll bet you get lots of rainfall in spring. Houzz, without my knowledge or consent, changed me from nanadoll, a user name I'd used for years, to Diane Brakefield. My zone was part of the nanadoll name, so I forget to list is separately now that I am a mere Diane B. I'm in zone 7A, southwest Idaho in semiarid desert (10 inches precipitation per year average). We are having a coldish and very dry spring which is slowing things down, not to mention the hard prune. Do you have any photos of the roses you still have questions about? Judging by the good job you did on Julia, I think your instincts are good about how to handle the other roses. Diane

Prairiemoon, I think you did a nice job pruning your Julia, and thanks for sharing your photos from last season as well. I love your companion plantings...very smart color combinations you have chosen. Diane, your Julias are truly famous around here for good reason, and I always enjoy seeing them!

I wanted to comment/ask about the red mottling on the canes you noticed. I have a Julia that's about 6-7 years old and have been noticing that exact same red mottling for the past 2 years or so. I had assumed it was disease, perhaps black spot (?) which I have read can take up residence in the canes. Or some other type of fungus? Perhaps this is a unique trait on older Julias as I have not observed this on any of my other roses, though Julia is the oldest one I have. Wondering if anyone can shed any light on what causes this?

Arlene, thank you for your nice comment. A some of my roses get those red spotted canes, and I ignore them. The spotting seems to just go away in this garden. It's not black spot. Diane

Phew! thanks to all the great input and the video - I felt more equipped to go for it and I got all but one rose all done. And I'm happy with them. I cut back the Julia, just a little more. Took off a few more thin canes and side canes. Took some branching ends off to a straight line, but basically left it about the same height, maybe a few inches shorter.

I went back and looked at Beverly, which had good growth on it but some of the canes I had left were thin, so I took those back and shortened what was left a little.

PJPaul really was awful and I had to cut most of it down to the ground and left about 3 stronger canes about 6 inches high. Savannah - had some strong growth on some canes, so I cut those by half and anything that didn't look right I took back to the ground.

So, we'll see. I'm trying to find no spray roses. Julia Child has been great for me for years so these three are my next experiment to see how they work out.

Diane - now I get it - Nanadoll - When I saw your Julia Child I thought you also had a couple of other Twilight or something similar in the purple tones that looked great with the yellow. GW won't give you back your old screen name?

Yes, our climates are different. We normally get 30 inches of snow or rain over the winter and then more in spring, with part of July and all of August usually drier. But this year we didn't even have to shovel. We are very low in precipitation so far this year. Not sure what to expect.

Thank you Arlene, I've been trying a lot of different combinations and last year I was happier than previous seasons. I am looking forward to this year.

Yes, not sure about the red mottling. I don't remember what it was like last year.

Roselady, I frequently drive past the old Jackson and Perkins test garden and they always prune their hybrid teas down to about 18inches leaving only 4 or 5 canes

They prune hard and they always come back big and full.

You really can't prune Julia wrong. Take off all dead wood and then decide what shape you want from there and go for it. I've had years where I had to mow the poor girl down to the soil and some where all I needed was to tip her and she grows great both ways!

Thanks Seil for sharing that experience. I used to try to grow David Austin Roses - 'Golden Celebration' was one, and it just wasn't as healthy for me, so halfway through the summer I would cut the whole thing down to the ground to get rid of all the unhealthy foliage. It would come back, but after a few seasons of that kind of treatment, it wasn't as vigorous. [g].

And Kristine, nice to hear how Jackson and Perkins handle spring pruning. Thanks.

kristine...that's good to hear, as I prefer to prune them hard