Pruning to achieve the best flowering
If you’ve noticed diminished or lack of blooming on flowering shrubs, you might be pruning them at the wrong time. Shrubs such as forsythia, bigleaf hydrangea, azalea, weigela and lorapetalum produce flowers on “old wood”--or growth from the previous season. Vines like honeysuckle, Carolina jessamine and spring-blooming clematis also bloom on old wood. These plants should be pruned soon after flowering to prevent loss of buds for the next year. Shrubs that bloom on new wood—the current season’s growth--may be pruned in late summer, fall or winter. These include butterfly bush, American beautyberry, gardenia and rose of Sharon. Butterfly bush in particular benefits from a hard pruning in late winter to encourage vigorous new growth. Beautyberry may also be cut back substantially to produce more of the flowers that will produce the beautiful, purple fall berries. For a list of when to prune many popular species, visit http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/HGIC1053.htm. For the hows and whys of all types of pruning, check out www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/
factsheets/shrubs/text/pruning.html.