About the service
I always start the same way: a slow walk around the garden with a notebook, naming every shrub and vine before a single cut is made. That step is not a formality. The species, and very often the particular cultivar, decides where next summer's flower buds are sitting and how much wood can come off without paying for it. Panicle and smooth hydrangeas flower on growth they will make next spring, while bigleaf and mountain hydrangeas set their buds on this year's wood months before the frost arrives. Clematis fall into three pruning groups, and one mixed border happily holds all three. Roses are no simpler: a once-blooming rambler and a repeat-flowering hybrid tea ask for opposite decisions on the same afternoon.
Pruning everything to one tidy height is the most common reason a shrub grows strong, green and completely flowerless. Shortening a bigleaf hydrangea in autumn carries the whole of next summer away in the wheelbarrow, yet the same cut on a panicle hydrangea is exactly what it needs. So I work in two passes. First the sanitary one — dead, broken, crossing and diseased wood, whatever the plant is. Only then the shaping cut, chosen per group: third-group clematis go into winter short, first-group keep their vines whole, second-group get a light touch and are laid down instead.
Timing belongs to the weather, not to a date. Covering early is as damaging as covering late: sealed up during mild damp spells, a crown sweats, and what waits under the wrap in March is rot rather than living shoots. I wait for settled light frost and keep everything ventilated until then. The cover is air-dry — a frame, a breathable sheet, vents deliberately left open — never sheet plastic pulled tight over the plant. Tools are cleaned and disinfected between plants, and any prunings showing disease leave the property instead of going onto the common compost heap.
— survey of the garden, identification of species and cultivars, a written note for every plant with a photo and a label
— sanitary pruning: dead, broken, crowding and diseased stems removed first
— shaping cuts by group: hydrangeas by flowering habit, roses by class, clematis by pruning group
— canes eased off arches and trellis, coiled and laid on a dry bed
— mounding the base with dry soil or compost, kept clear of the graft union
— air-dry cover with ventilation; fully closed only once frost has settled
— shading against late-winter sun scald on stems and graft unions
— staged uncovering in spring, over several visits rather than one
— removal of all prunings and litter, tools disinfected between plants
— a single visit or a season-long arrangement that includes spring uncovering
Pruning everything to one tidy height is the most common reason a shrub grows strong, green and completely flowerless. Shortening a bigleaf hydrangea in autumn carries the whole of next summer away in the wheelbarrow, yet the same cut on a panicle hydrangea is exactly what it needs. So I work in two passes. First the sanitary one — dead, broken, crossing and diseased wood, whatever the plant is. Only then the shaping cut, chosen per group: third-group clematis go into winter short, first-group keep their vines whole, second-group get a light touch and are laid down instead.
Timing belongs to the weather, not to a date. Covering early is as damaging as covering late: sealed up during mild damp spells, a crown sweats, and what waits under the wrap in March is rot rather than living shoots. I wait for settled light frost and keep everything ventilated until then. The cover is air-dry — a frame, a breathable sheet, vents deliberately left open — never sheet plastic pulled tight over the plant. Tools are cleaned and disinfected between plants, and any prunings showing disease leave the property instead of going onto the common compost heap.
— survey of the garden, identification of species and cultivars, a written note for every plant with a photo and a label
— sanitary pruning: dead, broken, crowding and diseased stems removed first
— shaping cuts by group: hydrangeas by flowering habit, roses by class, clematis by pruning group
— canes eased off arches and trellis, coiled and laid on a dry bed
— mounding the base with dry soil or compost, kept clear of the graft union
— air-dry cover with ventilation; fully closed only once frost has settled
— shading against late-winter sun scald on stems and graft unions
— staged uncovering in spring, over several visits rather than one
— removal of all prunings and litter, tools disinfected between plants
— a single visit or a season-long arrangement that includes spring uncovering
