Pruning Boscobel. My first year with this rose and I'm a bit stumped. It will produce a many stemmed cluster of a dozen or more flowers from one very upright 18 inch shoot. So I've let my entire cluster flower and deadheaded them as they faded and now the lot have been removed. Following the main stem of the cluster down the bush and looking for a 5 leaf junction to prune to I'm about 8inches off the ground before I find one. Seems pretty drastic to me to lop off about 18 inches of abundant growth. None of the above junctions on the cluster have a five leaf node ?
To confuse me even more some of the stems on the cluster have begun sending growth shoots, Crown Princess Margareta does something similar, lots of stems on a cluster and new shoots emerging from cluster nodes before the whole cluster has been deadheaded.
Could I have a little advice please.