Are you cutting any plants back this month ?

[cleo333]

Just wandering

Yes my buddleia is chopped back to within an inch of its life lol.

I cut back herbaceous plants if they don't have good winter structure eg Phlox are looking awful but I leave Phlomis

I cut my Stachys to the ground as it had some horrible powdery mildew thing going on.

I try and leave most things until the spring , unless they are going limp and rotten, as shelter and seed heads for the wildlife.

I’ve yanked out buckets of perennial geraniums in order to clear the borders before mulching. I’m pruning the rose branches as I go once they stop flowering and I hope to carry on until it’s all done ( not a big garden at all but being ill for much of this year it’s got out of hand)
I’ll carry on pruning/cutting back as I go, I can only manage an hour or so a day so it’s a very gradual process!

My garden is jungle style, so I have a lot of big leaves. I’ve started cutting down Musa basjoo (bananas), salvia amistad (it’s gigantic) and colocasia (elephant ears) and removing lower fronds from palm trees, and I remove bagfuls of persicaria whenever needed, including now. In the next few weeks/months (depending on weather) I will be cutting down cannas as well, once they’re done flowering, and Ricinus. I also need to think about overwintering various things, which means cutting down things that wouldn’t otherwise fit in my overwintering space, such as my monstrous Alocasia, and begonia luxurians which is very much luxuriating indeed. I’ve also started moving non hardy succulents indoors, this will continue over the next two months along with pelargonium, osteospermum and various others.

I also need to prune a clematis, it’s not the right season for it but it’s scrambling very close to our solar panels so I need to tackle it somehow.

I lopped a load off the top of my rosemary bush earlier as it was starting to block the kitchen window.

I've also got rid of some hazel branches (I'll do a load more in Spring, but it's a tree that keeps on giving...)

I don't think I have any shrubs or perennials that need anything other than a light tidy up and removal of dead material between now and March.