Pruning in May is a much more enjoyable experience compared to the colder previous months.
Proper pruning is one of the elements of gardening that is as fundamental as weeding your garden and watering plants, but it’s important to know what to prune each month to get the best results.
Taking to her gardening blog, Sarah Raven has shared a few plants she recommends need pruning.
1. Spring-flowering shrubs
These spring-flowering shrubs include the likes of forsythia, deutzia, and weigela which produce their blooms on the woody stems made in the previous year.
Sarah said: “Spring flowering shrubs should be pruned back to encourage next year’s growth.”
Cut out these stems as soon as the flowers have faded and leave the current season’s new shoots to grow from the base. These are the stems that will carry the flowers next spring.
2. Aubretia
The gardening pro claimed that aubretia can be cut back after flowering to “encourage better and more flowers”.
If the plant has become straggly, overgrown or bald in the centre, give it a hard prune cutting right back.
With a younger aubretia plant which is in better shape, and more compact, it requires only a light prune up to 5cm.
Cutting back later in the year may interfere with the plant’s flowering next year. However, do not cut over winter.
3. Early-flowering clematis
Trim early-flowering clematis once they have finished flowering. Cut them back if they have filled their allotted space.
If they are not pruned, Sarah warned that they will get dense and matted.
Gardening guru Monty Don agrees as he claims that May is the “best time” to prune early-flowering clematis.
He warned that because next year’s flowers are formed on all the new growth made from this period until late summer if you prune them much later than mid to late June you will be removing potential flowers that would bloom next spring.
