Always check before you prune

In The Garden With Arthur O'Meara

Probably the most misunderstood aspect of gardening and one the most difficult to get right is pruning.

I don't know how many times I have heard, ‘I sent him out to prune and he destroyed everything’.

Ideally, you should know the pruning requirements for every plant as they are all different – for example, some plants need hard pruning, others light pruning.

The time of year varies as well: some are pruned in the winter; some are best pruned in early to mid-spring; some in mid-summer; some require autumn pruning; and some are double pruned – they are pruned in summer and again in winter.

So before you prune, you need to know which group the plant belongs to and if you don’t know, then don’t prune.

The good news is, if you get it wrong, most plants will recover, but you may not get the desired result.

Some plants are pruned mid-summer after they have flowered. If you prune those plants now, you cut off the flower buds that have developed after the plant has flowered, and the result is no flowers this season.

As a rule of thumb, anything that flowers before the longest day (June) needs to be pruned directly after flowering and the resulting growth will be next season’s flowers.

Anything that flowers after the longest day is pruned in winter or early spring.

There are some exceptions to that. Plants such as lavender will not respond at all well to pruning. They require a light trim just to remove the spent flower heads, around the middle of March.

Camelias, Magnolias and Rhodoendrons are best left alone. Clematis and their pruning requirements necessitate an article just for themselves, and the different varieties have differing pruning requirements.

The pruning of fruit trees and bushes is another article.

Most people prune to reduce the size and vigour of plants, whereas in fact the pruning has the opposite effect and increases the vigour.

If you hard-prune roses, they produce new shoots that grow quickly and are strong, which is probably what you want, but if you prune Hydrangea Annabelle severely, it will also grow back quickly, and taller, and become too top heavy.

A rule of thumb is to always check before you prune.