Regular pruning benefits all woody plants, such as shrubs, trees, and vines. Pruning keeps them vigorous and healthy, as well as improving their shape.
Cutting out the inside growth is called thinning, and this allows for sun and light to get into the middle of the plant and often prevents powdery mildew. Pruning can also improve fruiting and flowering.
When pruning your flowering shrubs, such as lilacs, removing the top growth will increase branching nearer to the shrubs base. This helps promote more flowering on shrubs, such as spireas, honeysuckles, and lilacs, which often get too tall and leggy.
Use a saw or lopper to remove older branches. And an overgrown shrub can even be cut back to within 6 inches of the ground if it needs complete rejuvenation.
Be sure to prune very early in the spring or late winter for summer and fall bloomers such as beauty bush, butterfly bush, caryopteris, dogwood, hibiscus, crepe myrtle, sumac, and ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea.
Spring bloomers like forsythia should be cut back hard as soon as they have bloomed in the very early spring. Lack of pruning results in tall, scraggly looking shrubs with sparse bloom.
This is Moya Andrews, and today we focused on pruning flowering shrubs.
