I love pruning garden plants and its sense of accomplishment and opportunities to express my whims. Funny, for a guy who hasn’t had a haircut in decades, eh?
Mostly, beyond getting rid of dead and dying stuff, it keeps things neat through shearing shrubs and hedges for size control, removing wayward stems, and cleaning out clutter. Routine cutting hybrid tea roses, hydrangeas, and figs every winter falls in there somewhere, though not all roses should be pruned as hard.
I just spent half a day doing all the above while the weather is reasonably nice but after the wasps have vacated their hidden nests (though I always shake shrubs first, just in case). I cut down the browned grasses and faded perennials, leaving those with strong winter structure or seed heads for wild birds. Stripped big leaves off a couple of trees to head off having to rake them out of flower beds later. Removed some low-hanging branches and vines above the walks.
Believing that all good gardens include strong contrasts in size, shape, and texture, I don’t prune everything; I have only have one boxwood and two yaupon hollies that are sheared regularly, mostly to show neighbors I know how and am able to do it; these tight green meatball-shaped plants contrast strongly with the bare stems of a nearby Japanese maple and the feathery layered nandina whose berries are just now starting to color up.
All that is routine, done every late fall or winter for foliage- or summer flowering-plants like everblooming shrub roses, althea (rose of Sharon), vitex, hydrangeas, gardenias, crape myrtles, and next year’s camellias, and every spring for azaleas, blueberries, clematis, and climbing and once-blooming roses after they finish flowering. The only time I touch my Peggy Martin, Lady Banks, and other climbing roses is after they flower, except when I need to remove just the most errant canes.
It’s okay, of course, to neaten spring bloomers a bit, getting rid of the wild shoots, but leave most stems untouched or there go your flowers. This includes blueberries and berry-making hollies and nandinas - leave some bits unpruned if you want berries next year.
Two hard fast physiology processes to keep in mind when pruning: One is that new growth sprouts right below wherever you make cuts on long branches – cut below where you want plants to sprout back up to. The other is that if you are removing limbs or branches close to where they sprout, don’t leave stubs or they will rot into the plant. Cut as close as you can without making large wounds or leaving stubs.
It is not good, by the way, to use pruning paints or other wound treatments; most either have zero benefit or will seal in decay organisms or can actually retard healing. This is well-known by arborists, regardless of what your dad used to do routinely.
Lastly, I enjoy topiary and other fanciful pruning. Espaliering vines and trees nearly flat against walls, making multiple-stem poodles out of hollies and junipers, shearing individual shrubs into cones and balls and pyramids… it’s all just a case of removing what you don’t want, and leaving the rest. Sorta like plucking eyebrows.
Southern Living’s taste-making and social shaming aside, if you don’t approve of cutting crape myrtles into fist-like balls every year, don’t do it. But keep it to yourself - this ancient form of topiary is called pollarding and is done routinely worldwide, including by arborists with the Royal Horticulture Society.
Productive or artistic, when it comes to pruning, have a goal, think about timing, and have at it.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
