Lavender and roses make for the most stunning garden plants as their flowers are heavily vibrant and fragrant.
While both lavender and roses are relatively low-maintenance plants, there is one task they would greatly benefit from if carried out now – pruning.
Pruning is the selective removal of plant parts, including branches, buds, leaves, blooms and roots.
It can involve the removal of living, dying or dead plant parts. Pruning applies to both soft-tissue plants and woody plants.
According to the father and son duo Leonardo and Domenico Musceo, gardening experts on local services marketplace Airtasker, pruning lavender and rambling roses are just one of the four garden jobs to prioritise in September.
They claimed that pruning plays an important role in the maintenance of a healthy plant and “this time of year is the ideal time” to carry out this process for two common plants in gardens – lavender and rambling roses.
Late summer spells the end of the flowering period for lavender and by forgetting to carry out this job, “you risk it turning leggy and twiggy”, warned the pros.
Pruning “encourages a more compact shape and promotes new growth”, which helps the plant maintain a tidy appearance as it heads into autumn.
Also, late summer pruning can remove dead flowers, “ensuring it looks lush and healthy” over the autumn months.
While pruning, gardeners should take the opportunity to propagate lavender from these cuttings made.
To do this, you need to look for a nice straight and healthy stem that doesn’t have any flower buds.
For your rambling roses, it’s important to remember they flower on old wood – which is the growth from the previous year.
After they’ve finished flowering, the experts instructed gardeners to cut the flowered stems back by about one-third of their length as well as remove some of the older, woody stems.
They claimed: “Not only will this help to improve air circulation but it will encourage new growth too.”
