My bushes are overgrowing! Help!

[DragonMamma]

I’ll start by saying I’m a pretty novice gardener but bought a house with a lovely, mature garden. In the winter.

Now it is growling out of control and I have 1) no idea what everything is and 2) how to cut them back so I don’t ruin them but they look a bit neater.

I have a camellia bush that’s flowered and gone, am I OK to cut this back now?

My mop head hydrangea bush is massive (over 6 foot in parts 😬) but google tells me to wait until the spring before pruning?

Then I have endless bushes - some with flowers, some without. If anybody could help me ID them that would be great as googling bush witj yellow flowers is doing nothing but confusing me.

Thank you

Gosh, I must have been paying attention, I actually know a couple of these. Number 2 is St John's Wort, can't remember its proper name, number 3 is a Wigelia. Hope that helps.

I think 1 is a Hebe. With the Wigelia I think you can prune back the flowering branches once the flowers have finished.

Generally those in flower now can be pruned after the flowers have faded. This allows them to grow new stems over the summer, which will flower next year, so don’t prune again in the spring.
Your Camellia will be making flower buds for next year, now so don’t prune. Give it plenty of water, as this assists the bud development.
Next year after the Camellia has flowered you could thin it out a little.
It’s Bush is a hebe, you can prune it after flowering.
The third one is Weigela and can also be pruned by removing the spent flowering stems. Leave the ones without flowers, they will flower next year.
The second one looks like hypericum , although mine have a different leaf. They can be thinned out in the spring and respond to hard pruning.

Oh wow! Thank you so much. From Google I think the first one is Hebe ‘pewter dome’ and the others are definitely St John’s Wort and Weigela which will help with my pruning attempts.

The rest are just a variety of leaves and grasses I think and I’m just going to hack at them as there’s no flowers to lose in the process!

Thanks again 👍🏻

Thanks for the tip on the camellia JT, I would have ruined it had you not said and I do love them even though they don’t last long.

I’ll take note for the other ones and just trip the grassy bushes for now then.

Could anybody help me with what this is? It’s mainly just the leaves (yellow/green) and it’s growing like nobody’s business but there are these flowers in some parts?

It’s a jasmine, Dragon.

If you want to cut it back, that should be done gently in spring. The flowers should be lovely and scented.

Oh how lovely! I love the jasmine smell but crikey, at this rate I won’t be able to trim anything back until next year

I really do need to trim the St John’s Wort back a bit as it’s now blocking the path to the back gate. Any advice on how to do it as sympathetically as possible without butchering the poor thing?

They’re quite tough! I’d take out 1 in 3 stems so it leaves you with some flowers. The birds love the seed heads. I cut it back hard in early spring it always grows back and flowers on the new stems. That way you can keep it to the size you want.