Here are some helpful suggestions on how to rework a rose border.
An older rose border or one that you have inherited can be salvaged with a little work and effort on your part. The first thing that you need to do to rework your rose border, is to examine all the bushes to decide which ones are healthy enough to keep and which ones may need to go. This should be done in late winter or early spring in cold climates, which is the best time for pruning roses. It is likely that some will have become overgrown by suckers. The worse case would be if you only have a briar rose left in your border. This sometimes happens when the rose bush reverts back to the graft from which it came from.
You should dig out any of the briar roses and remove the suckers on any other plants by severing them at the point where they have strong healthy shoots growing from above the graft. A graft looks like a lump in the stem when you look at it. This will usually appear at or near ground level. If a rose has no new growth, it should be removed. Also, if a rose bush may have been planted too high, or if they are wobbly and unsteady. If you go through these steps, you may find that half of the bushes are not worth keeping.
Your next step will be to prune the rest of the plants that you have left. Be sure to remove any spindly stems and all stems that may be diseased in some way. The stronger stems should be shortened to make them healthier and produce better shoots. Make sure that the centers of the rose bush itself is able to get air circulated around it.
After you are done with pruning, apply or reapply a thick layer of a soil and mulch mix around the rose bushes. If you take the time to go through these steps, you should be able to nourish the rose border back where it will give you top performances. Do not forget to water and fertilized as you should with any rose bushes.
