Removing hips from Rugosa planted a year ago

(East Metro Toronto)

Hi, Doug,
We planted several Rugosa roses in a community garden last summer. This summer they are doing extraodinarily well. We have been advised that we should remove the hips on these young plants to encourage more growth next year (actually, we were planning on pruning them late this fall or early next spring as the got quite big and there are other plants in the gardens). Two questions: should we remove the hips and should we wait for spring before pruning?

Doug says that rose hips are one of the great winter delights in old roses. I never removed them nor pruned them off unless I wanted some rose hip tea. There is no horticultural reason I know of to "need" to prune them off so it becomes a visual/design decision.

Pruning is best done when the shrub is dormant and because these are cast iron hardy, you can do them whenever you have the time and dormancy (the rose is dormant, not you) :-) Spring or fall works - I confess I normally did all my rose pruning in the spring - seemed to work out best in the long run in case there was some form of winter damage. But then again, Rugosa only need minimal pruning for shape and renovation as they are indeed a big rose shrub. Again, I only removed the dead wood on an annual basis and pruned when I needed to shape or renovate. Yearly pruning and fussing was left to the hybrid tea roses not the rugosa sweethearts.