Burning Bushes are popular landscaping plants that bring a vibrant color to your yard. This is the time to cut it back! There is risk that you could lose the plant in cutting it back several feet, but it’s a low risk with a burning bush if you do it at the right time of year. A few years ago, we did cut some eight-foot bushes down to three-foot, and actually used loppers, not even hedge trimmers. We got back into the heavy stems of the plant.

You can see the structure of the branch structure of the plant, and it does make it a little easier to prune it this early. The plant hasn’t sent up any energy creating foliage. The last thing you want to do is wait for the foliage to come on and then cut all that foliage off, because the plant’s already sent the energy up, and it needs that part of the plant to make food for itself to grow more roots. So doing it this time of year is the time of year we recommend for that hard pruning. It’s really important to feed it with like an all-season fertilizer as soon as you’re done. Then in April, as that new growth comes on, it’ll fill itself right back in within a season. It’ll be beautiful again.

It is more difficult to do that drastic of a cut back with plants like azaleas and rhododendrons. Evergreens are some plants that are very difficult to trim really hard, because you get back inside into the old wood where there’s not green growth anymore, and generally, they don’t recover as good as deciduous plant material does. There are certain things that are easier and certain things that are harder, but this is the time of year. If the plant is to the point where you’re going to tear it out anyways, it doesn’t hurt to try a hard trim back. And if it recovers from it, great. Then you’ve got a big, mature, beautiful plant. If it doesn’t recover well, it was to the point where you’re going to take it out anyways. It’s a no harm, no foul situation.

Keep up that spring cleaning and gardening, and don’t forget to stop in to either our locations for all your landscaping, fertilizing, and plant needs!