A friend asked a question on a forum about what I’m pruning these days, and I thought I’d share the answer here. This is based on what I have in my yard:

It’s good to prune any shrubs now EXCEPT those that are spring flowering shrubs. Things like forsythia, flowering cherry, or others that will flower early in the season should NOT be pruned until after they flower. Otherwise, all the flowering wood gets cut off.

Shrubs that need hard pruning

Butterfly bushes (buddleia) need to be pruned down hard to short stubs to make them grow back and flower best. But mine are now about 6 years old, and I can’t cut them to the ground anymore. They have thick stumps at the basal clump. Cutting them down to about 12″ or so works fine.

I have some yellow-twig dogwood shrubs that will need fairly hard pruning (about 18″ high) this month — they get these awesome bright red branches in the winter, but if you don’t prune them hard in early spring, they won’t grow all the new branches that turn brightest red. Also, the spirea bumalda shrubs need fairly hard pruning now, too. I’ll leave them about 12″ tall. Other things I’ll be pruning hard in the next few weeks include a blue arctic willow shrub (pruned like buddleia), blue mist spirea (caryopteris), and some ornamental grass clumps (I have blue oat grass), which will get cut down to about 6″ tall (OK, they’re not a shrub, but I work on them when I’m doing spring shrub pruning).

Any time now is safe to prune roses. I have a hedge of floribunda roses that I’ll prune to about two feet high and thin out some of the branches as well as removing the dead canes. A lot of people say to prune the roses when the forsythia blooms, so by that measure, I still have some time. But really, I think it’s fine any time now. Other roses need different pruning, and I’d encourage you to search google for pruning advice on your particular kind of roses (hybrid tea, grandiflora, shrub roses, English roses, climbers, etc.). I will say that I also have some Ruby Meidiland roses, which are a fairly low shrub-type rose with long, arching canes, and I’ve read recently that they do fine with no pruning. I’ve been pruning them each spring so far, and I might just try only removing the dead or criss-crossing canes this year and see what happens.

Shrubs that need more moderate pruning (most everything else, except the spring-flowering ones)

I have a lot of hibiscus shrubs — the deciduous Hibiscus syriacus kind. I cut about 1/3 of the top back and make a nice rounded shape on top for them. That’s a safe way to prune most shrubs that are either summer flowering or are not grown for their flowers, like “burning bush” euonymus, English laurels, privets, and so on.

Spring-flowering shrubs

For the forsythia, flowering cherries (sand cherries), and some of my viburnums, I just wait until after they’ve flowered to prune them. I may wait a while and do it in mid-summer if I’m busy, but it would be best to do it right after flowering to avoid making them waste too much energy growing stuff I’m just going to cut off anyway.

Fruit trees

I do the fruit trees every year at this time. Peaches or nectarines need about 1/3 of last year’s growth removed so they’ll produce enough new branches this year for next year’s fruit. They only flower and fruit on wood that grew last year. It’s also important to open up the center of these trees so light gets in to ripen the fruit. Apples and cherries aren’t so picky, because they’ll flower on old wood, but I still prune something on them every year to control their size and shape. They don’t need the same open-center pruning as peaches and nectarines — they’re supposed to be a “modified central leader” shape, which is easy to envision but seems harder to implement when you’re actually hacking up your own tree. :-) Anyway, I have some in various shapes, including multiple leaders, and they still produce fruit very well.

Here’s a good link on pruning apples that I recently saw linked from a GardenWeb post, which will be helpful to anyone growing apples. And I just found a pretty good guide to pruning peaches and nectarines here. It’s a PDF file, so you can get a nice printout from it.

Ornamental trees

I don’t always prune shade or ornamental trees every year, but I will be trying to hone my artistic skills on some Japanese maples this month. Those are challenging, because they can look SO much more beautiful when done right, and I don’t want to mess them up! For most shade trees, I think it’s most important just to remove criss-crossing branches and branches that are too low and then just let the tree take its natural shape.

If any readers have questions, post them in the comments, and I’ll respond.