I Have A Rose That Instead Of Growing Upwards It Is Growing

[lilacben]

out from the sides.? I think my husband must have cut out the middle upwards main branch last winter.? Will this ever flower?

[woofgang]

That may be its natural growth habit, some do sprawl. Why shouldn't it flower?

[Old_Geezer]

Prune it to the shape you like. What sort of rose is it ? Can you, perhaps, tie it to a trellis and train it to grow up there ?

[Clanad]

If the rose is a grafted hybrid, especially a tea rose and the branch you're observing is outgrowing the rest of the rose by leaps and bounds then it's likely a "sucker" or rogue branch emanating from the original base rose into which a graft was placed to achieve a color or other desirable outcome. Look closely at the base of the rose just above ground level and you should see a "knob" (if it is a grafted hybrid)... if the wild branch is coming from below the "knob" it's deffinitely a rogue. You can try cutting it off close to the main rose but in my experience, that is probably wasted effort and I'd get rid of the entire rose and replace it.

Most rouge or sucker branches won't bloom and if it does it will most likely be a 5 petaled rosa with no special color or fragrance but blessed with hardiness that makes them suitable for the base in-grafted plant.

[lilacben]

Many thanks... I really do not know what rose it is as it isnt ours but at the garden where we do the gardening for them.. And they wouldnt know what it was at all ... But there are several brunches... infact all the branches fan out from about three inches from the base.? but no sign of any flowers...but then there do not look like suckers either?... ok I will get my husband to have a good look at it tomorrow as you said and see what the bottom of it looks like.

[bhg481]

As Clanad says, suckers come out from below the graft. Usually they have 7 leaves on each leaf-stem and the foliage is lighter in colour than the main plant.
I would disagree with Clanad on replacing the rose rather than removing the suckers (if that's what they are) - replacing roses can be tricky because of "rose-sickness". Planting a new rose in place of an old one very often results in the new rose not becoming a good plant. We have around 100 roses round our garden which we planted when we moved in 35 years ago. We tried replacing a few which were getting weary and the replacments nver formed good plants. We've tried again this year replacing 4 and trying some of this stuff:
http://rootgrow.co.uk/
We only planted the replacements at the beginning of the year but all four of them seem to be doing well.