Doing the Chelsea chop

It’s not, despite the name, done for plants showing at Chelsea; it’s a simple process employed around the time of the show. It was allegedly started by nurseries that took their plants away after the event, cut them back and repotted them to reinvigorate them.

WHY The Chelsea chop is done to some perennial plants as a way of getting them to stay stocky and produce more flowers over the coming summer. It will also delay flowering by four to six weeks, which extends the flowering season in your garden. WHICH A range of perennials can benefit: nepeta, phlox, achillea, campanula, aster, echinacea, penstemon and rudbeckia. If you have a few clumps of the same plant, why not experiment and give some the chop, leave others and compare the

results? They’ll both flower, just in different ways at different times. Some people even cut half the stems in a clump back, so they’re leaving some long (which flower earlier) and the others short (which flower later). This is less of a “chop” and more precision pruning!

HOW Use sharp, clean secateurs. With tall, leggy plants, cut the stems back by about a half, aiming to cut just above a pair of leaves or a node (bulge) in the stem. With shorter plants, take around a third off the top. Water and feed. Simple as that!