Susie’s Garden
Don’t be afraid to wield the shears – cut back now for a longer blooming period and strong plants that don’t fall over!
Some plants in the garden are well behaved and keep to neat, tight clumps all year.
Others get too tall and fall over and if you try and prop them up, they just look bedraggled when tied to a cane. But if you think ahead, cutting back the plants that might get too big at the right stage, you can control not only their size but also when they flower.
Because of the time of year you do this – late May, around the time of the Chelsea Flower Show – it’s called “Chelsea chopping”.
A gardening friend of mine says, “Every year I wish I’d Chelsea chopped but I never do!” She only has a small garden and space is at a premium so she doesn’t want big, unruly plants.
I’m often so busy in May that I forget to chop back some of the plants I would like to. This year I am determined to prune back the yellow aconitum which always gets enormous, and to prune the heleniums to make them flower longer.
There are only some plants that you can do this with; don’t prune ones that only flower once, such as peonies, irises or aquilegias. Use it for perennials that flower in late summer and early autumn, but try experimenting or read up on which plants others have had success with.
As you are taking off the top shoots, the plants will produce smaller but more numerous flowers on side branches.
Using shears or secateurs, reduce the whole plant by a third. Alternatively, cut back a third to a half of the growth from just the front stems of the plant. If you have several of the same variety, cut back some but leave the others and water well. This will stagger the flowering time so that your helenium or golden rod will bloom for weeks longer.
Plants to experiment with could be tall campanulas, rudbeckia, echinacea, catmint, aster and phlox. It’s a useful technique to try on sedums if you find that they usually flop over, leaving a hole in the middle of the clump. There’s a good video on the YouTube site of The Sunday Gardener. So go on, get chopping!