What can I do to my roses to tackle these issues?

[N00bz]

Moved house last year and there’s a bed of different roses growing against a wall. Sadly, there was a lot of black spot and lots of the flowers failed to thrive. I did treat the black spots and prune it away which definitely helped, but couldn’t keep it from coming back.

Additionally, the plants grew quite leggy.

What can I do now to-
a) minimise black spots taking over again this year?
b) get a better shape?

I’ve attached a picture from the summer (complete with the California poppies to the front- they basically bloomed for nine months, gorgeous flower) before the black spots were too bad, but you can see the leggings, and also that some of the flowers didn’t bloom fully.

When are you planning on pruning the bushes?

I don’t know. I’m a newbie to roses so was hoping for some advice on this- should have mentioned it in my first post.

From what I’ve read, pruning when buds start to appear from around January seems to be the advice, but I’m wondering if I cut them right back and keep treating for black spot, will that help?

As I'm in London and my bushes are next a wall, like yours, my roses still have flowers now. Unfortuantely thanks to the change in weather this it is now normal for them to have flowers for most of the year.

Anyway I was told by a gardening friend years ago to prune in February. There is a rose garden near me so I prune when they prune their roses which are a mixture of types. They prune them any time from end of January to mid-March.

They also prune them to sticks. However if I do that with mine I end up with very vigorous growth and have to lop bits off in May as they stick out too far.

Like you I don't know what type of roses they are as I inherited them from a previous owner.

Anyway RHS advice - www.rhs.org.uk/plants/roses/pruning-guide

Now is a good time to prune, so that's good! Remember you can be quite harsh so don't worry about pruning too much, the more the better in fact.

Select the 4 or 5 strongest looking stems, not too thin and not too old, and get rid of everything else. Cut back the remaining stems to about half their length, to just above an outward facing bud.

Bung a good handful of manure around the base of each plant, then feed again in March with a proper rose food.

You should find that your stronger healthier roses won't succumb to black spot so much this summer, so hopefully you won't need to worry about treating it much. I get a bit of it on one particular rose, but I just keep on top of the affected leaves and stems, cut them and get rid of them.

Great advice- thanks everyone 💐