Gardening expert Alan Titchmarsh is urging gardeners to prune their roses this February to ‘breathe new life’ into them.

The Ground Force and Gardeners’ World legend says that the end of winter is the best time to cut back roses to encourage them to bloom much more this summer - but you shouldn’t use power tools like hedge trimmers to do it.

The gardening expert, for Waitrose TV, said that pruning at the end of each winter, preferably by hand, will keep roses ‘healthy and looking good’.

He stresses the importance of doing this at the end of winter before new growth starts.

He said: “To me, it seems like sacrilege to hack back much-loved rose bushes with a hedgetrimmer just to save a few minutes, when there’s little else going on in the garden. 

“I get a great deal of satisfaction out of thinking about where to cut and how to cut each stem to produce the best possible results. 

“You see, rose pruning is much more than simply controlling the size of the bush. The pruning cuts you make will influence the rose’s health and vigour, as well as its flowering potential.

“Pruning will help breathe new life into your roses. After a few years of blooming, a rose stem becomes exhausted, so that flowering diminishes. 

“This loss of vigour encourages a bud lower down the stem to break and grow and replace the exhausted stem. Pruning merely helps speed up this natural process, while keeping the rose healthy and looking good.

“I prune all my bush roses during late winter, before new growth starts. This can vary from year to year, according to the prevailing weather conditions. After last year’s long, cold winter for example, I didn’t prune until early March. But in milder years, it can be a month earlier.”

Alan urged gardeners to prune roses with a cut ‘a few mm above the bud, sloping away’, so tha the top of the slope protects the bud.

If you cut too close to the bud, you can damage it, but cutting too far can create a snag that kills the bud.

Garden expert David Austin backs this up. He says: “It’s time to prepare your roses for the year ahead and give them a prune. Ideally, complete this task while the roses are still dormant. 

“If your roses have leafed and you still have not pruned it is still better to prune, but this may push back the flowering period until later in the season. 

“If you haven’t pruned by March, don’t worry; your roses will still benefit from a thorough prune.”