Prune winter-flowering shrubs
Give them a chop now for more blooms later in the year
There are many shrubs that flower during winter and they’re really valuable garden plants to provide colour and interest through the cold months. Although many winter-flowering shrubs don’t produce large, showy flowers, many do have scented blooms that fill the garden with perfume on sunny days.
Another advantage of these winter beauties is they often have a long flowering period. Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’, for example, with its pale pink, scented flowers, can start to bloom as early as November and will carry on until early spring. Other winter-flowering shrubs include the winter honeysuckles such as Lonicera fragrantissima and L. purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’, which are both shrubby plants and produce small, but sweetly scented, cream-coloured flowers in late winter and early spring. There are also excellent evergreen shrubs that flower in winter, such as mahonias ‘Charity’ and ‘Winter Sun’, that flower from December through to February, or Sarcococca confusa with its small, dark green foliage and dainty, strongly scented flowers in February and early March.
Winter-flowering shrubs flower on the previous season’s growth so pruning, if needed, is done immediately after flowering has finished in order to give shrubs a full growing season to make new shoots that’ll flower next winter.