8 Plants You Should Never Prune in the Summer, According to a Professional Gardener
If you want bigger, healthier blooms, put away your pruners.
Aside from the essentials—sunlight, water, and soil—every plant needs a little maintenance to grow healthy and strong. While fertilizing gives them a much-needed nutrient boost and weeding wards off competition for resources, pruning promotes growth. “Pruning is one of the best ways to keep plants healthy, encourage strong growth, improve airflow, and remove damaged or diseased branches before they become a bigger problem,” says Misti Mathis, co-founder of Harvest Gold Organics. “A well-pruned plant can put more of its energy into producing healthy foliage, flowers, and fruit instead of trying to sustain parts of the plant that are no longer productive.”
While snipping off dead, damaged, or overcrowded branches has plenty of benefits, timing matters—a lot. If you prune your plants at the wrong time of year, you could accidentally remove next season’s blooms, leave them vulnerable to pests and diseases, or simply stress them out. During the summertime, in particular, many flowers, shrubs, and trees have already formed next year’s buds, so trimming them now would mean sparser plants next spring. Plus, heavy pruning could add more stress to an already rundown plant that’s just trying to survive the summer heat. Because pruning is specific to the season, we asked Mathis to unpack the plants you should never prune in the summer—and when to prune them instead. So, put away your pruners for now, and next year’s garden will thank you.
Follow these pruning tips next:
Lilacs
Lilacs are fragrant, flowering shrubs that prepare for their growing season almost a year in advance. “Spring-blooming shrubs form their flower buds for next year’s blooms shortly after they finish flowering, so pruning too late can remove next season’s flowers,” Mathis explains. To avoid accidentally cutting off future buds, postpone pruning until the moment they’re done flowering.
Azaleas
Azaleas are spring bloomers that develop their buds months before spring arrives. So, if you give them a fresh cut too late in the summer, you’ll snip off their forthcoming flowers. To encourage vibrant blooms next spring, avoid pruning your plant after late July or early August, and stick to a post-flowering pruning in late spring instead.
Forsythia
With their sunny yellow shades, forsythia flowers easily brighten up any garden. If you shape them in the summer, however, you’ll dim that dazzling effect. Because forsythia sets its buds on old wood, aim for a late-spring pruning—right after their flowers fade and once their leaves begin to sprout—to promote healthy new growth.
Oak Trees
If there’s a big oak shading your yard or adding a majestic touch to your cottage garden, hold off on cutting any dead or diseased bits until its dormant season: early November through end of March. “Oak trees are especially vulnerable because fresh cuts can attract insects that spread oak wilt disease,” Mathis says of summer pruning.
Bigleaf Hydrangeas
Hydrangeas might pop up across landscapes all summer long, but the season is off limits for pruning bigleaf varieties. Because thee types of hydrangeas bloom on old wood, pruning in the summer (along with fall and winter) will cut off future flower buds. Like spring-blooming shrubs, save your snipping for immediately after they flower.
Rhododendrons
Every time spring rolls around, rhododendrons put on a show with their leathery leaves and brightly colored petals. But if you clip dead or twisted branches in late summer, you’ll expose tender new shoots to less-than-ideal winter conditions. That’s why scheduling the gardening chore for right after they’re done blooming is the preferred route.
Magnolias
Known for their striking, aromatic flowers in pretty shades of pink, purple, or white, magnolias come to life in early spring. While mature magnolia trees don’t need much pruning, making unnecessary cuts in the summer months can reduce flowering. If you need to chop off a problematic branch or two, opt for late winter or immediately after flowering.
Japanese Maples
“Japanese maples can become stressed by heavy summer pruning,” Mathis notes. That’s because pruning forces these trees to grow new leaves, which will become vulnerable to summer pests and freezing winter weather. For best results, Mathis advises lightly shaping the tree during its dormancy in late winter.
Lilly Blomquist is the associate editor at The Pioneer Woman, where she writes lifestyle stories across a wide range of topics—including news, entertainment, holidays, food, and more.
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