The rambler would benefit from a thinning, but down to the ground is too drastic. It may not recover from that. Now is the right time to prune, but be discriminating and go with a gentle hand with the rose.

On the other hand, the honeysuckle would be rejuvenated by a drastic prune. It would just put out more runners and show you it's not going anywhere. :)

Usual pruning for a rambler is to take out the branches that flowered almost to the base. If it is too late to distinguish which they are you might take out half of them for this year and the other half next year?You could even risk taking the others back by perhaps a third or a half?

Thanks. It is a complete mess at the moment, quite difficult to see through it, so trying to distinguish what bit grew when is nigh on impossible. If it were mine I'd take it right down as I did with a climber I was trying to kill off - it didn't work and was back to its usual self a year or two later, with loads of blooms. Personally I don't think he'll bother, there's always something better to do!

Actually, ramblers should be pruned in September rather than now, for preference - its climbers that get pruned now. But if its really overgrown and looking nasty, probably okay to do it, though you'll be sacrificing this year's crop of flowers, most likely. As for the honeysuckle, best done in two or three stages over 2 or 3 years, taking a third or half of the growth away from the base, tidying up what's left, then removing the other third/half in successive years if necessary. Cut to the ground now, all it'll do is put out a very few individual, long strands of growth which will look weedy. To be honest, though, if he's not much of a gardener, he'd be best off having both taken out and replacing with a couple of low maintenance, easy care shrubs such as Cotoneaster cornubia and the like - or smaller varieties that need no, or very little, attention.

Thanks Bamboo, I shall have to catch him before he takes a chain saw to the rose! I very much doubt he'll do anything though judging by the state of both front and back gardens.

yea, does sound that way, but doesn't matter if he does chainsaw it down, so long as you've given him accurate advice in the first place! What he does after that is his choice...

He'll never forgive me if he chops it right back and it doesn't flower this year so I'll have a word.

Just go over there and tell him you made a mistake, then give him the correct information, or drop a note in his mailbox. You'll all feel better. Nobody is perfect & most people with common sense understand this.

Yes I shall have a word with him. I've always taken my roses right down every year but they were climbers which did wonderfully well after the chop, didn't realise ramblers would suffer differently.