I need to prune my hydrangeas really hard

11 years ago

Early this spring I hacked off some hydrangea clumps from some established plants. About 90% survived.

So now the clumps are rooted, some are starting to flower. They are lacecaps and mopheads. They look terrible though, tall and lanky, with few leaves on existing woody stems. Luckily most are sprouting new growth from the base though.

According to the internet, late summer after flowers 'fade' (whatever that means..they seem to last forever almost)..you're supposed to prune.

Would then be a good time to hack them back really far to get rid of all the lanky growth? I'm a little hesitant because doing so would take just about all of their developed growth away, leaving some new branches of growth that probably aren't woody. It'd be a shame to lose the plants from hacking away all of the woody growth.

I guess the other option would be pruning in stages, so maybe this year take half the woody growth length off, rather than 100% of the woody growth off.

What do you think? Just trying to get some good structure going on these new transplants.

Thanks!

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Comments (2)

October_Gardens
11 years ago
You can technically hack away as much of the stems as you want, as long as the stems and leaves remaining (on old or new wood) are healthy, and that there are enough leaves for the plant to continue to nourish itself. Root problems are more apt to cause stems and leaves to die, so if the roots are healthy then the plant up top should also be. On whatever is left, the plants will set buds for winter just like it always did.

I would go halfs for now on the old wood, like you said. You can do it anytime, as long as you don't mind losing the existing flowers. There is no finite quantity of old wood you can hack off and have it harm the plant. It definitely makes sense to take a plant that has about five 4-ft tall stems and cut them down to 2ft to begin building a good structure on a new shrub.
gribbleton
Original Author
11 years ago
Thanks, since they seem to be doing fine I'll probably just cut them pretty far down to a foot or half a foot and take care of them.
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