Robust, aromatic, and well-known for its minimal care requirements, rosemary is a favourite in gardens and on bright windowsills. This is why many consider it one of the simplest herbs to grow. However, as time goes on, even the most vigorous plants can begin to appear worn out, woody, stretched, and somewhat thin in areas where they shouldn’t be.
To avoid this happening to your rosemary plant and to revive the plant, gardening expert @gardening.with.ish on Instagram has shared an easy fix – and that’s pruning. He captioned his Instagram video: “Rosemary, if left unkempt, can become woody and leggy and not as healthy-looking as it did before. However, a simple prune in the right places and it’ll thrive and bush out – looking just as amazing as before.”
The gardener noted that the end of spring is the “ideal time” to give rosemary plants a prune.
With a rosemary stem in hand, the expert demonstrated the “best bit to prune”. He said, “Because you’ve got soft wood and hardwood on your rosemary, it may not be too clear.
“However, there is a very clear colour difference. The softwood cuttings are more green and a little bit more pliable, and your hardwood is brown and a little bit more solid.”
You want to cut just above where the green growth ends and the woody stems begin, making sure you leave some green growth on each stem.
The gardener claimed that you can cut as much of the soft wood off of your rosemary plant as you want, but never take a lot of the hardwood off.
Although if your rosemary has grown to be quite wild, the chances are that you’ll need to cut quite a big bit away, and you do sometimes have to cut into the hard stems.
If you want to know where to cut in this case, the expert said to try and do so above the healthier woody stems. This way you will find that there is still some life left on the plant, and that will continue to grow.
One thing you also want to make sure to do when pruning is to take care of any dead stems that are at the bottom of the plant – these are the ones that have gone slightly black and a little bit rotten.
The expert recommends cutting the dead stems away. Even though they’re hard stems, your plant “will do better” by getting them gone.
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