As most rose gardeners know, these thorny landscape favorites grow on canes, each of which has a life cycle. Shrubs are no different: canes go through phases of rapid growth, followed by abundant flowering, and then eventually decline into either woody, non-blooming growth, or death. The key to healthy shrubs, then, is in pruning out the old to constantly renew the canes, and create the greatest number of new, flowering canes. This is a task best accomplished in fall and winter when it is easiest to see the different canes in the plant about one another.
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