Key Takeaways
Hold off on pruning your hydrangeas in the fall—trimming too early can either stunt new wood growers or wipe out next year’s blooms on old-growth varieties.Save the serious snipping for early spring if you have panicle or smooth hydrangeas, and do minimal pruning—or none at all—for bigleaf, oakleaf, and mountain types.Instead of hacking a hydrangea down to size, consider transplanting it in the fall to a spot where it can flourish without constant reshaping.
There’s a lot on your fall garden to-do list, whether you’re planting new bulbs for springtime blooms, adding perennials to grace your garden next year, or even planting some new vegetables that can provide late-season produce. But while many perennials could use a good pruning in the fall to clean up your garden and reduce the chance of plant damage over the cold winter, you should keep the pruning shears (mostly) away from your hydrangea plants.
Here’s why you should be a little (or a lot) lazy when it comes to cutting back your hydrangea plants. Experts share why you don’t want to prune your hydrangeas in the fall.
Why You Shouldn’t Prune Hydrangea in the Fall
“My simple rule is do nothing this time of year unless you have no choice,” Ballato says. “Pruning—if at all—shouldn’t be done in the fall unless the plant is dormant and flowers on new wood. That means it has naturally lost its leaves. Otherwise, the gardener will stimulate the plant, which is what you don’t want in the fall.”
Hydrangeas that flower on new wood are ones that produce blooms in spring on new growth. Hydrangea types that flower on new wood include the panicle and smooth varieties. (That includes popular varieties like Annabelle, Limelight, and Vanilla Strawberry.)
The other issue: some of the hydrangea plant will die back over the winter, and cutting away a lot before winter does its job will lead to a much smaller plant overall, Ballato says. “It’s a good idea to allow for some winter kill of the new wood plants.”
For hydrangea types that flower on old growth—such as bigleaf, oakleaf, mountain, and climbing hydrangea—by pruning the hydrangea, you’d basically be cutting away all of next year’s blooms with every snip. In fact, you should generally avoid pruning these hydrangea varieties at all, Ballato says.
The Ideal Time to Cut Back Hydrangeas
For the panicle and smooth varieties of hydrangea, early spring is the ideal time for pruning to help stimulate new growth. “If you cut in the fall, you could lose additional top growth by next spring when the plant really needs the haircut and the stimulation of a pruning session,” Ballato warns.
For all the other hydrangea varieties, you should do minimal pruning, if you do any at all.
How to Prune Hydrangea
While some plants require vigorous pruning to promote growth, you don’t have to get too crazy with the clippers for your hydrangea.
“If one must prune for whatever reason, then prune the hydrangea the way you want or need it to be,” Ballato says. “That may mean a smaller footprint, or maybe a different shape.” If you do need to do a drastic prune to keep a hydrangea in check, Ballato recommends transplanting it to a more spacious part of the garden instead. “Better you should transplant it to the place where it can grow to its full glory than hack away at it regularly.” (And fall is the absolute perfect time to transplant a hydrangea!)
No matter what hydrangea type you have, you should always remove any branches that look dead or unhealthy. You should do that throughout the growing season.
For hydrangea, you can leave the dried blooms there until the spring to add a little interest to your winter garden. If you want to deadhead hydrangea blooms, lop off the bloom and the stem down to a pair of leaves.
For all hydrangea that require pruning (or that you want to prune back a bit if they’re too overgrown), cut the branch at an angle, right above a “fat bud,” which is a sign of new growth.
Make sure that you use well-cleaned pruning shears to help reduce the risk that your hydrangea develops a disease at the cut points. That will help ensure a healthier, more vibrant plant that graces your garden for years to come.
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