In August, you will use your pruning shears and other tools for cutting a lot. During the month of May, you can cut off the ends of flowers, harvest veggies, and prune plants.
Plants stay neat and healthy when they are pruned, and in August, many shrubs, trees, bushes, and perennials will benefit from some extra care. Along with cutting off dead flowers, pruning is the most important job for trimming plants in the summer.
But not everything will be better, and you shouldn’t trim some plants in the summer. Here are seven plants that you should prune in August to help you decide what to cut and make your plants grow better.
1. Lavender
If you don’t take care of lavender, it can get stiff and tall. This problem might not happen if you prune your lavender plants every year. In many areas, August is the best month to prune hardy lavender. English lavender is the hardiest type, and this is the best way to prune them in the summer.
Carefully cut back purple to green growth and new shoots to keep it in a neat shape. If you’re trimming, don’t cut into the woody part of the plant. The plant might not grow new shoots from that old, bare wood.
2. Philadelphia
Philadelphia are pruned after they’re done blooming, which in many places is in August. If you grow philadelphus in your yard, you should always prune it during the summer. If you trim in the spring, you will cut off the stems that hold this year’s fragrant flowers.
Philadelphus, which is also sometimes called a “mock orange,” has beautiful, highly fragrant white flowers in late spring and early summer.
3. Climbing pyracantha
Pyracantha is a great plant that is loved for the bright berries it makes. The berries are fiery red, orange, and yellow. It looks great as a hedge, but many people also grow it as a permanent climber, like to cover a garden wall. A growing pyracantha is a great feature, but it will look better if you cut it back more in the summer.
Protect your hands and arms with thick gloves and long sleeves whenever you prune pyracantha. The sharp thorns can hurt you. In the summer, all side shoots that come off the main trained framework are cut back to two to four buds, and all shoots that point inward are taken out.
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4. Laburnum
Laburnums are beautiful trees that have groups of bright yellow flowers in late spring and early summer. They look great as specimen trees that stand alone, and you can also train them to grow as climbing plants over bridges or pergolas, where the flowers can be a beautiful sight.
Laburnum doesn’t always need to be pruned a lot, but when it does, it’s important to do it at the right time. Before they grow, in late summer, is the best time to prune them, but you can also do it in the fall. Laburnums are known to bleed sap if they are trimmed in the spring or early summer. This can make the tree vulnerable to pests and diseases.
5. Bottlebrush
Bottlebrush plants are in the genus Callistemon. They make great flowering trees for backyards with lots of sun. The name comes from the fact that their bright red flowers look like brushes. In the summer, they make the plant look foamy.
It’s important to prune your bottlebrush after it blooms in the summer so that it stays neat and puts on a great show of flowers every year. It keeps the bush small, because shoots can keep growing after the flowers have died, which would make this fast-growing blooming tree look a little messy. The unique flowers of next year will grow on new growth that has been helped along by careful pruning.
6. Fountain Butterfly Bush
Buddleja alternifolia, which is also called fountain butterfly bush or weeping butterfly bush, is a strong and big butterfly bush with unique arching branches that look different from the more common Buddleja davidii.
The lilac-purple flowers on the fountain butterfly bush are made from last year’s growth, but the flowers are great for bees and other pollinators just like the flowers on any other butterfly bush. Many buddleias are pruned in the spring, but this type would not do well with that.
7. Deciduous hedges
In August, you can trim back a lot of deciduous bushes, like beech, hawthorn, hazel, and hornbeam. If you shape the shrub in the summer, it will look nice for the next few months and all through fall and winter, when the leaves fall off. To keep them neat, bushes that grow quickly need to be trimmed every year in the spring and summer.
How you cut the hedges and the tools you use will depend on how big your yard is and how you like to garden. String lines may need to be put in more formal hedges to make sure the lines are clean and straight. Shears can be used to cut smaller hedges.