What to Prune Now

With the long summer months slowly passing into the cooler and calm autumn days, it is time to take stock of your garden with your pruning tools at hand.

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Now is the time to see what should be neatened, shaped, tamed or encouraged to give another flower flush, as most plants will have grown vigorously and might need a haircut or a clean-up.

Prune the evergreens – this means trimming topiaries and formal evergreen hedges. Allowing plants with a formal shape to lose it takes away from their quality and desired denseness. Neglecting this job and then trying to correct it in a drastic way is seldom successful and defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Care for the damaged – damage from hail and summer storms causes torn and broken branches, which can lead to disease. Cut back damaged material to healthy nodes and treat proactively with a general-purpose fungicide.