Stop Cutting These 9 Garden Plants in Fall! You Could Lose Next Year's Blooms 🌿🍂, by Tiny Garden Corner on YouTube. 13 min.
- Video length
- 13 min
- Time to do it
- 30 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 10
What you need
Steps
Walk your beds with a notebook and name each shrub and perennial. Note whether it flowers on old wood, meaning buds form the year before, or on new growth in spring.
Leave bigleaf hydrangeas alone in fall. Their buds sit on old wood through winter, so cutting now removes next summer's flowers. Prune right after they finish blooming if you need to.
Skip lilacs in fall. Prune them within a few weeks of the flowers fading in late spring, or the shrub will spend a season growing leaves instead of blooms.
Do not cut rhododendrons in autumn. They set buds in late summer and hold them on the shrub until spring, so leave the stems until flowering ends.
Treat azaleas the same way. Prune straight after they bloom in spring, and no later than mid-summer, so the new growth has time to harden before frost.
Leave garden mum stems standing through winter to protect the crown. Cut them down to a few inches in spring once new green shoots appear at the base.
Keep coneflowers and black-eyed Susans standing. The seed heads feed birds and hold interest in frost. Cut the stems back in early spring before new growth starts.
Check which clematis group you have before cutting. Spring-flowering types bloom on old wood, so prune them after flowering. Types that flower on new growth can be cut in late winter.
Wait on forsythia. It flowers on stems grown the previous year, so prune right after the yellow blooms fade in spring and leave it alone in fall.
Leave rhubarb crowns alone in autumn. Let the leaves die back naturally, then pull the dead foliage away in late fall or early spring instead of cutting into the crown.
Tips and common mistakes
If a bed looks messy, cut only dead, damaged or crossing stems in fall and save the shaping for spring.
Wear gloves and wipe your pruners with rubbing alcohol between plants so you do not spread disease.
Write the flowering date on a plant label so you know exactly when to prune next year.
When in doubt, wait. Skipping one season costs you nothing, but a wrong cut can cost a year of flowers.
Questions
Can I cut back hydrangeas in fall if they look messy?
It is better to wait. Bigleaf hydrangeas carry next year's buds on the stems, so a fall cut removes them. Leave the stems until the flowers fade next summer.
What can I safely prune in fall?
Dead, damaged or diseased wood, plus shrubs that flower on new growth and are fully dormant. Leave spring-flowering shrubs until after they bloom.
How do I tell if a plant flowers on old wood?
Look for fat buds already formed on the stems in autumn. If you see them, the plant is setting next year's flowers and should not be cut now.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
