I have a pesky rose bush that rarely blooms and simply creates massive green shoots. Now those shoots includes a prickly, feather-ly looking shoot which is unsightly. Unfortunately, the bush has been adjacent to a stonewall protecting my driveway for 20+ years so digging it out may damage or collapse the wall.

Looking for advice on how best to destroy the bush/herbicide recommendations - natural better, but will take any thoughts!!!

What I've used to get rid of those tough invasive plants with thick trunks (hello and finally goodbye trumpet vine) is cut it just an inch from the ground and immediately paint the cut with an undiluted concentrate of glyphosate. If you wait, the cut can start to callous over and it won't be absorbed into the roots, which is how it kills it. Do this to each stem coming from the ground.

You might have to repeat the process for any new growth that might manage to come up if it doesn't kill it with the first application. It won't damage any other plants even immediately next to the rose, mine was coming up between hostas, peonies, daylilies, phlox, and not one plant even looked off from doing a controlled application on just the cut stems.

I have also used the "paint-the -stump technique successfully. It is very effective and introduces a minimal amount of chemicals into the environment.

I've done it too. Those little throw away foam brushes were a wonderful invention.

I bought an empty small fingernail polish bottle off Amazon that comes with a brush and fill that up with the straight glyphosate. It's been a long and nasty fight for me, but that way I'd have it in my pocket while weeding and can get to the smallest one just popping up again, instead of being too busy weeding to go get the solution and brush, etc. and then forget about it later. Keep after it, it definitely works. Just be sure to paint the cut stems only so you don't get any of it on the ground.

You don't say what kind of rose it is ... forgive my grammer.
You may not know.

If the only reason you want to get rid of the rose is because it doesn't bloom, it's possible that you have a once blooming rose instead of a repeat blooming rose and you are cutting it back at the wrong time for that kind of rose. If you can't kill it, you might try treating it like a once blooming rose to see if you can get the rose to produce one flush of blooms.

If it is a rose that is normally a once-blooming rose, if you prune it in spring, which is recommended for repeat blooming roses, your rose will never bloom because it is the kind of rose that blooms on "old wood". The time to prune once-bloomers is after they have bloomed.

The rose puts up new growth after you have pruned it this year and by next year that growth is considered "old wood" and you will see one flush of bloom.

Kind of like you care for a forsythia plant. You cut cut it back after it has bloomed.

If the rose is 'Dr. Huey', which I don't think it is because you mention that it has a lot of prickles, it will be hard to kill it.
I have tried to kill a Dr. H for 20 years, using many of the methods in the previous posts to this thread, and more, and have yet to succeed. In my view, the dang thing is immortal.

Good luck.

I really think the poster wants the rose gone, and the stump painting method will definitely work - even on Dr Huey.

I think you are right about him wanting the rose gone, but I still haven't managed to kill my Dr. H even painting the stump. However, I just wanted to give him a choice if the only reason he wanted it gone was because of its poor blooming performance.

Also, he can just cut out that ugly cane.

I'd probably try cutting rose bramble, and leave to dry... eventually haul some additional brush or whatever and light a fire on top of rose.

@stone ..

stone said: I'd probably try cutting rose bramble, and leave to dry... eventually haul some additional brush or whatever and light a fire on top of rose.

Sure sounds like a good idea. Jack Harkness, a world famous rose breeder, wrote in one of his books that in nature, roses have three enemies ... Frost, fire and the teeth of animals, but none of them will kill the rose.

I have a rose friend that had more than 1,000 roses ... some in pots and some in the ground. When the Camp fire took out the whole town of Paradise, California, she lost everything. When she went back a year later, she was able to rescue more than 500 roses that came back after the fire and after the clean-up crews came in and cut down all of the trees that burned in the fire.

She said the roses she lost were the rose that were in containers.