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I agree that you may need to keep the pruning equipment away from your well meaning husband for a while. I had clematis on my old arbor. It took several years of careful pruning and training until I had a gorgeous bridal veil of white blooms. When we both began having longer work hours we hired a lawn service to do the basics of mowing and leaf cleanup. That fall the crew came in and ripped up several perennials and pulled out 3/4 of the clematis as part of their "cleanup" service at the end of the year. They thought they were weeds apparently. Why I don't know, the garden was manicured and neat, with no weeds to speak of. We had a different service the next year. The remains of the clematis came back but never to the point it had before. BUT I think the rose will do better.
Climbing roses and rambling roses have different pruning requirements and bloom differently. What your husband did is sometimes used as a rejuvenation technique for old bushes. It will take a couple of years of care and much more judicious pruning to get it back to the original size. Here are some fairly helpful how to webpages: Pruning Climbing Roses - Fine Gardening Article
Thanks J&Em. I hope the roses do grow back, the adjoining neighbors have the same roses on the trellis, but of course not pruned like ours! (Close up rose bloom attached)
When we first moved in, he did a few errors with his gardening, like pullout a butterfly bush and leave goldenrod weeds, but we had no experience to speak of and it is quite a garden for beginners. We have several clematis but one arch trellis died and the ones we replaced them with didn't take.
Thanks J&Em. I hope the roses do grow back, the adjoining neighbors have the same roses on the trellis, but of course not pruned like ours! (Close up rose bloom attached)
When we first moved in, he did a few errors with his gardening, like pullout a butterfly bush and leave goldenrod weeds, but we had no experience to speak of and it is quite a garden for beginners. We have several clematis but one arch trellis died and the ones we replaced them with didn't take.
I do think your rose will come back, it will just take time. Be patient. It was clearly a well establish plant with a mature root system so it should recover nicely over time. Most climber roses bloom on old wood so your rose may not bloom well for a year or two. The husband should be restrained from all sharpened gardening equipment. Keep an eye on him.
Kudos though for pulling out the butterfly bush. It's an extremely invasive weed. Do not allow them on your property.
And, I also find clematis disappointing. I give them a big 'meh'. They either grow into a tangle of unattractive vegetation that blooms for maybe two weeks a year, or they fail to thrive at all and just look crappy and disgruntled. If yours croak, plant something else and be done with them. No great loss.
Your photo is a bit fuzzy, but are the tall pink flowers Japanese anemone?
Common butterfly bush looks like this:
The flowers are pretty, but make no mistake, this is a horribly invasive plant that will come up everywhere and root into every nook and cranny. Bad, plant, bad.
Japanese anemone will spread pretty aggressively too but they're not hard to pull up and control.
Many colors and varieties.
No they are more puffy and rounded, no spikes like the Japanese anemone picture. That is very pretty, too bad it's so invasive. Again, I'm not sure what anything is in my garden. I will have to get a better picture of them next year and try identifying them again.
I love touring the garden and seeing so many pretty flowers that you have. The problem with shots like that is someone may not be sure of what is actually being looked at, and small pictures that are not laser sharp in focus create a great deal of difficulty making an ID. A lot of the art of identifying plants depends on leaf type, size and shape, and the flowers (type of stem they are on, color, shape, when they bloom and so on). Some plants are obvious even when completely blurry and other... well, not so much. So here goes...
There are several plants in the picture but I am assuming you mean the pale pink flowers that appear somewhat fuzzy and are in the background. While mid summer to fall is the right bloom time they don't appear to be butterfly bush(es) and look more like individual plants. From what is visible the flowers don't have the right shape; conical like the purple ones Azoria posted a picture of, like these from Monrovia:
. They also don't have a solid single large flower look, to me, that Azoria saw and thought might be Japanese anemone. They look fuzzy in the picture (usually that comes from lots of tiny flowers making up a single "flower-head" and I am guessing that is what you mean with puffy.
At first I thought maybe something "fuzzy" like Meadow Rue like this one:
from Robsplants.com,
or this one from Horticolour.com:
but some of the plants closest to the Hosta have pretty large leaves and the structure resembles Spotted Joe Pye weed more. If this is correct it is a wonderful native to keep. Here's an excellent picture from the Connecticut Botanical Society
and here is information more local to you: Spotted Joe pye weed: Minnesota DNR Please compare these sites to what you have and you may be able to do your own ID.
Butterfly bushes have different degrees of invasiveness in different climates but generally are considered a bad idea to plant unless you take a great deal of care to keep them contained. The bushes have not been listed in MN as invasive, yet, but many other states have listed them and are banning them from sale. Several new varieties are supposed to be sterile cultivars that should not drop seed and be invasive. I'm waiting another year or two to see local results before I get one.
Let's see if this picture helps to identify what I may be calling a butterfly bush. They are planted on a hill so some may look shorter than others but all are about knee high to 3 feet. Grow on a single stem, turns pink toward July.
That set of pictures made it easy to identify! Some people call it "Queen of the Prairie" and its Latin name is Filipendula rubra. It comes in various shades of pink and is a wildflower in parts if the country.
Yay! That is it. I am starting to try to id and catalog what is in this massive garden so I know what to do with it. Thanks so much!
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. They also don't have a solid single large flower look, to me, that Azoria saw and thought might be Japanese anemone. They look fuzzy in the picture (usually that comes from lots of tiny flowers making up a single "flower-head" and I am guessing that is what you mean with puffy.
from Robsplants.com, 
I'm waiting another year or two to see local results before I get one.
