Can I Still Prune My…

Sometimes homeowners don’t notice plants that need pruning until the summertime. “Is it too late to prune?” our customers ask. Here are some general guidelines:

You can take off deadwood from any plant any time. If it’s dead, it’s dead! Cutting off dead branches and foliage will improve the look of any shrub or tree.

If you prune any of your spring flowering shrubs now you’ll be cutting off the flowers for next year. So you might want to only do a little touch up clipping on your azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs, forsythia and other plants that flower before the middle of June. Make a note on your calendar to prune these plants immediately after they finish flowering.

In general you don’t want to do any renovation, or heavy pruning, in the late summer or early fall. This is because any major pruning that removes more than an eighth of a plant’s total size will stimulate new growth. Any new shoots produced in the early fall won’t have time to grow and harden off before winter hits. So save any large scale pruning jobs for next spring.

Here are some of the common plants you can trim in the summer or early fall.