Sometimes you just need help.

I have been eyeing the grapevines that envelope the pergola for months. Last summer they cast a Stygian gloom rather than the dappled shade for which they had been planted and, to be fair to the vines, had provided for many years. There really is nothing lovelier than sitting beneath a pergola draped with grapevines on a hot day but as every grapevine harbours a desire to take over the world you really must prune back every year. If you neglect your vines for a year or two as I did then they will cover the pergola so completely that not a hint of sunlight will penetrate that suffocating canopy.

Those rows of grape-vines seen on foreign holidays and increasingly in our own countryside have arrived at their neat shape through ruthless pruning and I’m anything but ruthless. Still, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that these vines must be taken back to a bare structure and there is no-one better than my friend, Sue to tackle the monsters. We spent most of one short winter day taking the vines back with Sue, pictured here up a ladder, hacking back whilst I picked up the prunings and took them to the donkeys who love nothing better than grapevines whether fresh and clothed in leaves or dry.

The job was done and just in time for vines must be pruned in winter before the sap begins to rise otherwise they will bleed for days which does the vine no good at all and can even kill if it is young. But there are other pruning jobs waiting to be done and so I have now turned my attention to roses. The principle for roses is the same as their remote cousin, the apple tree, for both benefit from an open structure where air can flow through. Come to think of it, this holds true for all the currents and gooseberries in the vegetable patch as everything benefits from room to breathe.

Some years ago I participated in a pruning workshop at David Austin Roses where they most definitely don’t wait until March to prune roses. This only holds good for hybrid teas which, traditionally, are pruned in March because they were thought to be somewhat tender, taken back down to a few inches as hybrid teas also flower on new wood. At the nursery pruning carries on all winter, the roses are all stripped of their leaves which can harbour disease and to hasten dormancy so that the roses ‘rest’.

Pruning workshops are still available and I do recommend them for it taught me to be bold and shape my roses. The first lesson is to look at your rose and take out any dead or crossing wood then work around taking out any weak and spindly growth until you have a good, open shrub. Cut back a third to an outside pointing bud and I might add that come March add a dressing of rose fertilizer.