It’s just a few days into the...

It’s just a few days into the new year, and the South Coast Botanic Garden is already thinking about spring.

Although it is too early perhaps to think about baseball, the beach and warm days, it’s the perfect time to think about your garden.

That’s why the Botanic Garden has a seminar today on how to prune roses in the dead of winter to guarantee lush growth come April.

Clair Martin, curator of the rose gardens at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanic Gardens in San Marino, will be the featured speaker. Joining him will be Sharon Van Enoo, president of the South Coast Rose Society.

For about an hour inside the garden’s auditorium, the pair will lecture, answer questions and demonstrate how to prune several different types of rosebushes, including China, Austin and tea roses.

Martin and Van Enoo will use potted rosebushes to demonstrate what pruning techniques to use depending on a rosebush’s location (in shade or daylight, along a wall or in front of other bushes) and on the type of new growth desired (lots of smaller flowers or fewer larger ones).

The seminar will also address plant diseases--which roses are most disease-resistant--and the best way to plant rosebushes.

If it isn’t raining, Van Enoo said, the demonstrations may continue outside in the garden using planted rosebushes.

The Rose Pruning Seminar will begin at 11 a.m. at the South Coast Botanic Garden, 26300 Crenshaw Blvd. on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Admission to the garden and the program is $3 for adults, $1.50 for seniors and students, 75 cents for children 5 to 12 and free for South Coast Botanic Garden Foundation members.