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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Butchered philadelphus

8 replies

cloudtree · 13/03/2018 16:33

We have a garden maintenance guy who comes every couple of weeks and does things like clearing leaves, mowing the lawn etc but has never done any work on plants before. I asked him to prune a couple of shrubs a philadelphus in particular which has obviously been there a long while since it has woody stems but had become very tall and straggly. He's literally left about 2 feet of growth (it was about 9 foot) Does this mean I'm going to have to wait years for it to flower again? Will it recover from such a hard prune? Bit sad because the flowers were pretty.

OP posts:
bilbodog · 13/03/2018 16:46

Well pruning it now would have chopped all the flowers off anyway! The time to prune it is just after it has flowered. I have done a drastic prune before and it definately wont flower this year but you should get some next year. Ive decided to prune mine every 3 years so i have year one very few flowers, year two looking good but year three being amazing - but then its getting out of hand so a good prune and start again.

cloudtree · 13/03/2018 18:29

My intention had been that he cut a foot or two off the top and not that he cut it back quite so hard. Hey ho. At least it should recover

OP posts:
TERFragetteCity · 13/03/2018 18:30

www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=197

bilbodog · 14/03/2018 09:39

Give it a good watering to help counteract the shock!

cloudtree · 15/03/2018 10:18

It's certainly getting that today!

OP posts:
Alpestris · 18/03/2018 00:05

It will flower next year now.

Snowmagedon · 19/03/2018 17:45

My neighbours had an amazing one and didn't realise what it is so they always cut it back, every year just before it blooms they chop and hack at it, then say it doesn't do anything Confused anyway this murder has been long. About five years and they ate still going with it Grin it still bounces back. A bit like the Budleigh I don't want

TalkinPeece · 19/03/2018 20:11

He has just made it angry
I attach mine every year to stop it taking over - I hack it directly AFTER flowering though

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