Garden Guides / Pruning
Complete Pruning work with clear preparation, timing, and step-by-step instructions.
Use the foundation first, then choose a narrower guide for your exact task.
Foundational Pruning Guide
A hard pruning session on an over pruned apple tree feels like a disaster, especially when you see stubs and missing branches the next morning. The good news, in most yards, the…
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Deadheading a daffodil is really two jobs that look like one. You take off the spent flower and the seed pod behind it, and you leave…
The word daisy covers a dozen unrelated plants, and the cut that keeps one blooming can waste your time on another. A perennial Shasta…
A geranium carries its flowers in a rounded cluster on top of a long bare stalk, and that shape is the whole reason people deadhead it…
Most people meet mums as a pot of fall color and start snipping brown flowers off in October. That helps, but the cut that decides how…
By midsummer most petunias tell the same story. The basket that spilled over in June now trails long bare stems with a few flowers…
Before any advice about cutting is useful, it is worth knowing which plant you own. Two different lavenders are sold as French…
The plant and its bloom cycle determine where and when to cut.
Remove a hazard, improve structure, or renew growth with a clear reason for each cut.
Check whether the plant flowers on old wood, new wood, or both.
Watch bud growth and branch balance before scheduling more pruning.
