What a great article ! Most of the traditional advice for pruning was written for the hybrid perpetual class of roses rather the the more modern hybrid teas and floribundas and you have made a clear case of "why" we don't have to use those methods for more modern roses.
I'm on a crusade to eliminate unnecessary pruning. Hilarious! Don't ever feel guilty about not pruning your roses.
A couple of notes from someone who lives in a colder climate than Zuzu and a warmer climate than Toni.
I don't prune every rose every year. I also don't prune out all of the dead wood on some of the roses. The plants use that wood to hold up a heavy canopy of foliage and bloom. Of course it depends on the rose.
Research has shown that it takes 35 healthy leaves to support a bloom, so if you prune out anything smaller than a pencil, you are taking away a potential source of food for the rose because those shoots produce foliage that will feed the rose with photosynthesis. If they are in the center of the plant, the rose will abandon them on its own when they don't get enough light.
In the mountains of northern California, waiting until the forsythia blooms is truly important because we always have a winter thaw late January to early February which can last two to three weeks. My roses will put out the growth nodes shown in Zuzu's photo and even produce a lot of blind growth because the conditions are right for the rose to think it's time to start putting on new growth, but winter is not over. The forsythia hasn't even begun to have swelling buds. Sure enough we will have more winter ! And all of that new growth freezes.
The forsythia blooms in town, about two hundred feet lower elevation than my garden, two weeks earlier than the forsythia in my front garden. The forsythia on the slope behind the house, about twenty feet higher in elevation, blooms a whole week later and they both have the same sunlight. I usually cannot start my pruning until late March or early April.
In late fall, I make one exception for some of my roses which is what I call snow tipping. At my elevation, 2200 ft, I get heavy, wet, gloppy snow that usually only stays on the plant for a couple of days. For those roses that have a very heavy canopy at the top with stiff canes, I will lace them in the fall, so that the snow will fall through the plant and I won't have any breakage caused by the weight of the snow. These cuts are always above where I would normally prune and are just to open the canopy. It's a preventive prune.
Zuzu, I have never read a better article about pruning modern roses. Thank you ever so much for sharing what you have learned from your roses.
Smiles,
Lyn
