Shape Up! Early Spring Pruning
Early-spring pruning is an important part of any good landscape maintenance program.
Maintaining a landscape that is free from branches overlapping or rubbing against each other, bushes blocking any driveway or walkway and/or the removal of dead wood is ideal as well as aesthetically pleasing. Since trees and shrubs haven’t fully leafed out yet, it’s much easier to see where pruning needs to be done at this time because plants also have less fluid moving through the branches and pruning wounds heal more quickly. A warning though: be careful not to prune your spring-flowering shrubs! By now, their buds will have been set for blooming, and pruning them would eliminate their flowering in the spring!
Tips for Early Spring Pruning
• Early spring is a great time for cutting back your ornamental grasses to 4″ to 6″ from the ground.
• Fruit trees, evergreens and many deciduous trees and shrubs will benefit from being trimmed.
• Perennial plants can also be cut back in the early spring as it will encourage blossoms.
• Your landscape’s appearance can be greatly improved with a thorough edging and weeding of your plant beds.
• Any trees or shrubs that were planted in the fall will benefit from a long, slow watering once new leaves appear.
