Winter Pruning and Other Tips

Sure, it is cold outside. The frost has killed back many of your plants. The lantana is dead, the impatiens have wilted. The purple coneflowers have gone to seed long ago.

You have probably put your pruners away for the winter, and are looking forward to next spring. But, there are still a number of chores you can do in the garden right now.

This past weekend, I spent a few hours outside pruning my many butterfly bushes, of which I have 33, throughout my many garden beds.

It usually takes me around three hours to properly prune them all, and dispose of all of the dead branches.

For some odd reason, I do this during my Christmas vacation, and consider it the start of my pruning season (as I have a great many bushes, trees, and flowers that need pruning each winter), yet I got a head start on the pruning season this past Saturday, maybe because the weather was so nice.

Pruning is simply the process of removing old or dead limbs and flowers from a plant.

Many times, pruning is done in order to encourage the plant to produce new growth, helping them grow stronger and healthier, which often means new flowers.

Other times, pruning is necessary to remove diseased portions of a plant. Along with this, pruning also just makes a plant or flower look a little bit nicer and more beautiful.

The majority of the time, I use two types of pruners, a pair of hand pruners, and a larger pair of loppers, which require two hands to use. For the butterfly bushes, I used both.

I used the loppers to cut off the large, main branches, and the small hand pruners to cut back the small branches.

Whatever you use, it is necessary to ensure that your pruners are clean, and do not hold any diseases from previous plants. Simply clean them with some hot soapy water mixed with bleach before you start, and you should be fine.

My sister has a few butterfly bushes in our neck of the woods, Michigan, and they die back each year due to the intense cold weather.

Thus, she does not have to prune heavily, she just cuts back the dead growth to the ground, as butterfly bushes in the North do not grow to be large, woody plants as they do in the South.

For us, in Georgia, though, these flowering bushes can grow to as large as 10 feet, as some of mine did this past summer. In order for our plants to attract a bounty of beautiful butterflies next summer, they need a little pruning in order to spur on more growth.
I have found that by cutting my bushes back to around three feet, I will have plenty of flowers the following year. Other bushes that can be cut back in the winter include spirea, rose of Sharon, Beautyberry, and mock orange.

So, you have plenty to do in the next few weeks and months. Enjoy!