Winter Pruning for a New-look Garden

Midwinter is the perfect time to have a long hard stare at the garden. The bare branches and stems will readily show if your plantings have good shape and balance. Look afresh and see whether the garden is providing what you want or whether you need to make minor or even major changes.

Are some shrubs or trees growing too enthusiastically, outcompeting their neighbours? Are some branches throttling each other? Are some bushes looking weak and spindly? Are there bare spaces crying out for an occupant? What shrubs could you plant to attract wildlife? Lots of questions to be tackled!

Prune back large shrubs

We all make or inherit mistakes. For example, a young Philadelphus coronarius can look pretty lonely when first planted, so it may be given a close neighbour to help fill in the space. When left to its own devices, the Philadelphus will reach 10ft. with an 8ft. spread. It may have outcompeted a slower growing shrub like Choisya ternata. Your plan to solve the problem will be to prune the Philadelphus. As well as spreading too widely, it might need thinning out to encourage better flowering in the future. This major overhaul later in the winter will mean that you’ll have to sacrifice some summer blossom this year, but it will pay in the longer term. Routine pruning is, of course, done after flowering. And the Choisya? Try moving it to another sunny, sheltered spot while still quite small. It should survive the move.

Decide which damaged branches should be removed

Check for other congested bushes that will need thinning and reshaping. As an aide memoire you could even arm yourself with a digital camera – the modern equivalent to making lists, I suppose. If there’s been a recent fall of snow, clear the branches to prevent them from snapping. Broken and hanging branches should obviously be removed. Why are they always the ones that provided the best shape? If you come across any dead branches, saw them off almost to the green wood. The shrub or tree will have formed a protective seal at the end of the living wood which you’ll want to leave intact, especially during a cold snap.

Don’t prune more than you absolutely have to

It’s good fun choosing a crisp January day to walk round the garden making plans, but for several reasons, and contrary to a lot of old myths, very little pruning should be done at the moment. When a shrub’s stems are horribly tangled they do actually trap air, resulting in a warm microclimate that protects the bush from the hardest frosts. And lock up your secateurs till spring even if a stem is suffering from dieback. Frost and water would enter a cut you made into a living stem before the plant could seal over the wound. You would then end up with more dieback.

So content yourself with lots of plans but little action!