Hi everyone, Sorry I haven't returned to this thread sooner, I completely forgot I'd posted it. Thanks for all your advice, I think you're probably right about the pruning, but it's difficult to know when they have finished flowering because they don't really flower at all! In the past 4 years we have had perhaps half a dozen flowers on 50 plants. We have tried leaving them unpruned but still no flowers the following year. DH likes them kept to a manageable size because they're so vicious. Some of them have the sun all day, others for about half the day. Our soil is heavy clay. We also have about sixty other rose plants (shrubs, climbers and ramblers) around the garden which are all flourishing. Perhaps I'll leave them unpruned again this year and see what happens next year.