How to deadhead roses and encourage more flowers to grow

If you’re a novice gardener, don’t fret, because deadheading roses isn’t complicated.

Follow our easy steps on how to deadhead roses and you’ll have blooming beautiful blooms throughout the whole flowering season.

Why deadhead roses?

Deadheading is simply the process of removing flowers that have finished blooming – sometimes referred to as ‘spent’ flowers.

Aside from improving the plant’s appearance by keeping it tidy, the act of deadheading spurs the plant into creating new buds and flowers.

“If your roses are repeat flowering varieties, you’ll need to deadhead them to keep them flowering,” says Heloise Brooke, head gardener at The National Trust's Calke Abbey. 

“But if you don’t deadhead them, they will try to develop fruit (hips) and seeds, and all their energy will go into producing them instead.”

A plant’s reproductive system will always take priority over its other functions and will be the first in line for nutrients and water. Roses will still go on to create new flowers, even if they’re not deadheaded, but they will do so at a slower rate.

So, one way to get more blooms is to grab some gardening gloves and secateurs and get to work.

When is a rose ready to deadhead?

“The best time to deadhead roses is when the flowers are going over (fading or dying ), but before they drop their petals,” says Brooke.

“And any time of day is fine.”

How often do roses need deadheading?

Monty Don says: “Deadheading roses is really worth doing at least once a week – and preferably daily – in mid summer.”

Keep deadheading your roses after each flush of flowers.

What equipment will you need?

• A clean, sharp pair of secateurs - read our guide to how to clean secateurs
• Gardening gloves
• A trug or bucket for the dead flower heads

How to deadhead roses

Monty Don suggests that “pulling off the old flower heads will help, but the best approach is to use a pair of secateurs”.

Brooke advises: “Use a sharp pair of secateurs, hold the rose in one hand and cut the flower head off with some of the stem.

"Cut just above a main leaf, ideally at an angle, but straight across is also OK. Try not to leave any stem above the leaf, as this snag can die back.”

Once cut, a new shoot should then grow from the point.

Roses form either as single flowers or in clusters, sometimes called trusses.

“Single flowered roses can be removed one at a time,” says Brooke. “But with cluster sets or truss roses such as the Noisettes, or some of the floribunda roses, take off the whole cluster. Then, make the cut just above a main leaf.”

• To prolong the life of cluster roses if only one of two flower heads have gone over, simply snip off the single flower heads and you’ll be left with the remaining cluster of flowers until the whole cluster needs removing.
• When the whole cluster has gone over, make your cut at a thicker part of the stem, just above a leaf. Cutting at this point, will produce a thicker shoot of its own, which will carry more flowers than if you’d cut at a thinner stem nearer the old flowers.
• The correct way to deadhead a single rose it to cut above a leaf set that has five or more leaves. If you cut the stem at three leaves you will prevent the shoot from reflowering.