Picking the right time for pruning

Most woody perennial plants benefit from a spot of pruning at some stage in their lives even if it is just to remove broken or diseased stems.

In this garden, the secateurs are in year-round use to promote flowers, encourage fruit bud formation and control growth.

The correct time to intervene and how much growth to remove is dictated by individual plant species.

Roses are a good example of this. Rambling types have a one-off annual flower display, immediately after which we remove the spent old wood in favour of vigorous new stems.

The pruning of climbers comes now, drastically reducing all lateral stems and tying in strong shoots emanating from the base.

Although we are advised to remove half of the season’s growth from David Austin’s English roses, I resort to much harder pruning for any that have not grown as strongly as anticipated.

Rugosa roses tend to develop a thicket of stems so, while reducing the past seasonal growth by one third, also remove the same number of old stems from the base.

Several of the repeat flowering old roses; Alba, Gallica, Centifolia, Moss and Damask, only need light pruning, certainly no more than one third.

Whereas roses are reduced in size during their period of dormancy, garden shrubs are pruned according to their time of flowering.

We’ve recently reduced the height of a weigela by half because it does not bloom until next summer and will do so on the resultant new growth. However, if you examine a ribes, forsythia or Spiraea arguta, they are currently covered in plump flowering buds.

If we were to accidentally prune those three now… what consequences!