Please don't be greedy with your roses. Yes, dead-heading forces the plant to bear more flowers. But do you really need them? Really? More than the wildlife need those little high-energy packed meals throughout the autumn and winter, when other food is scarce? If you leave the rose hips to ripen you'll be providing true natural food for our wildlife. Thrushes, blackbirds and many hungry winter visiting birds eat the fleshy outer part of the hip. And the seed specialists greenfinches and goldfinches peck directly into the hips to extract the seeds inside. So please leave those nutritious rose hips on, and allow nature to provide the larder that was always intended, at the time it is needed the most. As a bonus, it will do your roses good, too. Letting hips form signals the rose bush that the growing season is ending, prompting it to redirect energy into root strength and winter hardening, instead of weak new shoots. And this simple biological concept applies broadly to almost all perennial garden plants. So please leave the pruning of your rose bush to late winter/early spring (February/March), once the birds have eaten the hips and the plant is still dormant. And if there are any ripened rose hips left then, take them to your nearest woods and give the deer a rare, nutritious treat.😋