Dh cutting flowers off tree

[Lazydayathome]

Just heard Dh chopping things away in the back garden, assumed was the hedges which do need doing, but it was a beautiful, blossoming tree with pink flowers. It’s the gorgeous one I sit and look at in the evening if I sit outside, I can (well, could) just about see it when sat inside in the dining room, it’s gorgeous and gives off a lovely smell, i’d also put a string of lights around it
Went out to ask what he was doing as branches of flowers tumbling to the ground. He said it’s gardening and has to be done? Is this correct? I don’t know much about gardening tbh, but all I can see is a few flowers left on a spiky sort of tree, when previously it was big and blossoming 😔

I don't intend to be unpleasant. I just find all these dramatics over a tree the OP never bothered to find out about herself to be very over the top and the insistence that he's husband must be an abusive idiot even more so. The OP seems to have been very passive about all this and it baffles me.

He's a fuckwit. You cut trees and shrubs back only if they need it and ONLY at the right time of year for that species. Which is never in the middle of when it is flowering. It will flower again next year, but he will have chopped off most of the flowering branches so it will be several more years before it looks decent again.

@Lazydayathome What a dick.

Why don’t you take up empathy and politeness classes?

My exDH was a twat like this, so I stood next to him while he "gardened".

Passive about all of what?

Your husband sounds like a bit of a dickhead who could well be jealous of a tree!

That is not gardening - that’s him being destructive and trying to make you feel bad for questioning his reasoning. If he was a gardener he would wait until autumn to cut it back.

Bin bags full of pull beautiful flowers?! He must be absolutely mental.

Don't ever let him near your plants again. What a total imbacile. He clearly has never ever done any gardening in his life before.

You cut back the dead leaves and flowers if you want to, or the seed pods when they go to seed. Not during flowering. You'd think everyone knew that really.

Aww honey, it's a real shame. Ignore some of the twats on here 🙄
I don't think it's remotely abusive, a bit ignorant but NOT abusive!!
You will just need to wait a year or two, then it's going to look even better than before.

My DH did this with my cherry blossom tree! I loved it so much and now is a stunted stupid looking thing in my front garden. He’s a greenkeeper so is used to cutting stuff back but I said o don’t want to play golf in my front garden so why did it need cutting? Was absolutely gutted.

It is upsetting, and it won’t grow many new blooms this year, but will bloom again next year. We have many oleanders and they need very hard pruning in the winter since they’re vigorous growers, and to stop them becoming huge and shapeless. You can make a spray against aphids using water, neem oil (or just vegetable oil) and a few drops of dishwashing liquid, but in our experience, the aphids always win!

This reminds me of when I came home from
work to find my now ex-DP thought he’d be helpful by pruning three gorgeous shrubs I had in the garden. He reduced them to a tenth of their previous size at completely the wrong time of year. I was livid, not least because the garden was not his domain and he had never showed much interest until that day. I was very upset, and it was just one of many examples of his deliberate incompetence. My life is so much easier now…

There's a good chance he's killed it. Some flowering trees are very sensitive and need careful pruning.

Your DH is an idiot who doent know what hes doing.

I feel for you OP, I had a gardener come that just used a strimmer over everything and he damaged a plant I was growing. Safe to say I didn't ask him to come back. It wasn't even like it was covered in weeds or anything, it was clearly there in its own patch.

My husband did this once. He won’t be doing it again.

The plant did grow back eventually and flower but that was more due to luck than his talent for gardening. Even now he maintains that it “needed cutting back.”

I wouldn’t say we were near divorce but I was really bloody angry. Men can just be a bit gung ho about pruning in my experience (my dad used to do this too).

Im so pissed off, honestly why is he saying it will grow back in two weeks? I sit on my outdoor chairs during summer evenings and it was the only really nice one we had in the garden, the smells, everything, honestly so gutted!

Either he knows nothing about gardening or he's just done it because he doesn't like the tree. He either believes it really will grow back in 2 weeks in which case he's pretty clueless or he's just telling you that so you'll stop asking him about it/criticising him.

DH knows nothing about plants, he killed a beautiful climbing rose and cut down a huge shrub in full flower. Poor health is the only thing that's stopped him. It's so upsetting!

You have my full support and sympathy OP.

Yes, if he knows it’s something you get pleasure from and would be upset about.
Hopefully he’s just being stupid rather than cruel.

Well she needs to give an opinion and discuss it so he won't do it again!. He needs to know its wrong!

Its illegal from March to October if there are birds nesting. Sounds like he has no idea what he's doing.

She's not in the UK.

@Lazydayathome a little bit of Googling (which you could easily do yourself) tells me that Oleander flowers on new wood. So you may get a few more flowers this summer. But it will take time to get its nice shape back..

Your husband is an idiot! Fancy just hacking away at a beautiful tree in flower without even checking first about the best time to prune.

Also his lack of concern, or even interest, in your feelings does sound a bit like abuse. Why don't you show him this thread?

You are not allowed to cut hedges during nesting season. Make sure he doesn’t do it. You also should never prune a tree during blooming season. They can be pruned very early spring or late autumn - pre or post blooming and nesting. Unless it’s dead heading old flowers you would not penetrate in between. That seems crazy to me.

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