Author and award-winning gardener Pollyanna Wilkinson has shared easy-to-follow advice for gardeners deadheading their roses this summer.
Like pruning, deadheading is a common gardening practice that involves removing parts of a plant. This gardening job, in particular, focuses on cutting off spent flowers to visually 'clean up' the plant and encourage new growth.
"By deadheading, you're going to get more flowers on your repeat-flowering roses – and why would you not want that?" Pollyanna asks her followers in a video via Instagram.
Deadheading a rose is relatively straightforward, but there are a few pitfalls to avoid, so you don't end up with unsightly brown stems.
As Pollyanna notes, there are two ways, or phases, of deadheading a rose.
The first applies when single blossoms in a cluster have finished flowering. Take a look at your plant; do you still see closed buds and currently flowering blooms? These shouldn't be snipped off.
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Instead, identify the spent blooms: those flower heads that have blossomed and have now lost all (or almost all) of their petals. Then, get your secateurs ready.
"What you're going to do is snip it right down [...] at the junction," Pollyanna explains. The junction is where the flower stem connects to the central stem, so by cutting at the junction, you'll take away flower and stem, and leave a clean central stem.
Avoid cutting the flower right below the bud, as "that's going to leave an ugly old stem, which is going to turn slowly brown – it's not cute," the gardener says.
Use the '5-leaf rule' for deadheading flowers
Phase two starts when the rest of the cluster has finished flowering. Then it's time to get rid of the whole cluster – and there's a clever hack to do this.
"What you're going to do is follow this [central] stem down until you hit five leaves, [...] and you will cut it right here," Pollyanna explains as she snips off the stem right above the five-leaflet leaf set.
This, she continues, will encourage more blooms to grow, and you won't end up with "the ugly brown bit of stick."
Wondering why it has to be five leaves instead of three? One commenter raises that following this advice would mean cutting back their plant by six to eight inches, but Pollyanna stresses that deadheading a rose like this would make it stronger.
"If you deadhead by just snipping off the flower head or cutting above a three-leaflet leaf, the plant may send out a weak, thin shoot that struggles to flower.
"The five-leaflet junction is usually from a thicker, stronger part of the stem, helping keep the rose bush balanced and bushy," she says in her reply.
"So in other words, it makes sure your stems stay sturdy as the leaf is usually at the thinner end and less sturdy."
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Wanda Sachs is the Multiplatform Writer for Country Living and House Beautiful, exploring the latest in gardening, wildlife and sustainable living alongside interiors and property. She is particularly interested in human-interest stories, the intersection of design and pop culture, and the evolving relationship between urban and rural life. Previously, she served as Associate Editor at The Berliner in Berlin, where she reported on culture and fashion. Wanda studied English and German at the Goethe University Frankfurt and Exeter University.
