Do you have shrubs in your garden which give you a show of blooms after midsummer? RHS Pruning Group 6 covers those plants which flower in late summer and autumn. As with other shrubs, you’ll want to take care pruning these at the right time, to avoid losing interest later on.
When?
Group 6 shrubs should be pruned in spring, as early as possible. In effect this means March, and certainly no later than mid-April.
How?
As with other groups, cut out any weak, damaged, diseased or dead shoots.
You’ll then need to prune back spent flower stems to within one or two buds of the woody framework.
Fuchsia can be cut back to near ground level, and it will send up strong new shoots.
Why?
Shrubs in pruning group 6 flower on new growth sent out through spring and summer. We prune them in early to mid-spring for two reasons. Firstly, it avoids the plant producing delicate new shoots while frosts may still hit. Frost could damage the young growth, delaying development for the new flowering season. Secondly, by pruning in spring we don’t cut off emerging flower buds, as we would after mid-April.
Shrubs in Pruning Group 6
One subshrub we use in our designs from Pruning Group 6 is Perovskia ‘Little Spire’.
Some other group 6 plants named by the RHS include:
- Buddleja davidii
- Caryopteris
- Fuchsia
- Spiraea japonica.
Kevin Gelder
Kevin joined Bestall & Co in late 2017 and brought a range of skills with him from a varied background. He gained a degree in French and Italian from Lancaster University in 2009 before successfully completing a PGCE at the University of Sheffield in 2011. He built on his communication skills through secondary language teaching, before working in healthcare administration.
Ultimately though it was his passion for plants and gardening which brought him to Bestall & Co as a member of the planting team, and although he's now moved back to an office based role, the articles he wrote whilst he was still with us live on.
