sage in bloomExtreme Technique Ensures Spring Growth Spurt

By Iris Watson


With all of the distractions of the season, it is a little hard to keep track of what is going on in the garden. It isn’t unusual for us to have lengthy periods of dry and somewhat sunny weather all the way through December. As a result, the leaves hang onto the trees longer, the roses may still have buds and bloom, the salvias look stringy and some of summer’s annuals may still be hanging on by a thread. And because the days are short (really dark by 5 p.m.), and the weather cool to cold, a lot of us don’t even see our garden until the weekend, much less think of watering, fertilizing or pruning.

However, if you look closely, there are windows of opportunity and you must seize them whenever you can.

PRUNING
A general rule of thumb is if your deciduous tree or shrub has dropped half of its foliage, it’s OK to prune and shape it.This includes Japanese maples, roses, fruit trees and most deciduous ornamental trees.This can happen as soon as early October or as To keep Mexican sage in check, dramatically cut it back often. late as December, but regardless, the plant is telling you that it is going dormant for the season. However, there are some exceptions to this general rule of thumb: If the plant in question is an early spring bloomer, and the flowers appear before the new leaves, then wait until after the blooming period to prune. Otherwise, you will be cutting off a portion of spring’s blossoms that you have waited a whole year for. Some examples are wisteria, flowering plum and cherry, dogwood, weigela, redbud, lilac and flowering quince.

Some plants just seem to need special attention. Hydrangeas are rarely totally deciduous, but there are several months when they are very sparse, usually in January and February. If you look at the base of the old, grungy leaves, you will find fat leaf buds. It is OK to gently pull off the old leaves and cut each stem back to please your aesthetic—there is no hard and fast rule as to how far back to cut. If it’s too tall, and you want to reduce the height, cut back by at least half. If it is young, and you want it to fill out more, simply cut back the dead flower heads to the first or second leaf node.

I find that there are two plants that gardeners consistently neglect to prune properly, if at all. One is a perennial, Salvia leucantha, commonly called Mexican sage.This plant was hugely popular during the years after the drought in the ’80s, and justifiably so. The velvety purple flower spikes just keep on coming almost all year, and it can spread by underground runners—but if not cut back hard on a regular basis, it becomes gangly and invasive. When the flower spikes have more dead flowers than live ones, cut it back to the ground. After a month or so, it will start sending up new shoots and will fill out and re-bloom and be nice and compact. You can do this repeatedly throughout the year to keep it under control. At the same time, run a shovel around the desired edge to keep the runners in check.

The second plant is a woody perennial called Buddleia, commonly referred to as butterfly bush.This plant has lovely flower clusters like a lilac in shades of violet, lavender, pink and white that attract butterflies. Buddleia grows to 4 to 8 feet and gracefully arches out to 4 or 5 feet.As they only produce blossoms on new growth, they must be cut back hard every year— hard meaning to the ground. By using this Lizzie Borden-style of pruning, you will always have blossoms at a reasonable height instead of a stringy, poorly shaped shrub with the blossoms towering above eye level.This can be done towards the end of February or into March, just in time to take advantage of that surge of new growth that comes every spring.