November pruning of trees and shrubs

You might think that now it’s November, you can take it easy in the garden apart from the occasional tidying up of leaves and mulch. Your work isn’t done yet, though. It’s true that by this time of the year, the garden is pretty much dormant, but this actually makes it a really good time of year to prune back many popular garden plants.

It’s perfectly fine to prune many plants throughout the dormant season. In fact, it can even be easier to do, because as soon as the leaves have you can see the shape and prune back to it. If you’ve planted any new trees recently, prune them back now and remove any damaged growth. This will help to balance the shape of the canopy. You could also take off any damaged or lop-sided growth
from established trees.

It’s not too late to complete any leftover pruning jobs you didn’t get around to in October and get them sorted ready for the winter. If you haven’t managed to prune back any of your winter-stemmed shrubs, they can still be cut back at the beginning of November. Prune them back hard and cut all of the previous year's growth to around 1-2cm.

You can also safely prune back some of the shrubs that would traditionally be cut back hard in early spring. Doing the work early can benefit them, as it helps to keep the plants’ larger and more brightly coloured young foliage – think about doing this to plants like such as smoke bushes and elders. If you don’t want to lose any of the bushes’ height, you could always leave a few of the branches untouched over the winter.

Don’t be tempted to prune back any spring-flowering shrubs like forsythia just yet though – keep an eye on them and wait until they have finished flowering, otherwise you’ll miss out on this year’s display.

If you have lavender in the garden, lightly cut it back so that they don’t grow back too woody. The same applies to curry plant and cotton lavender plants. Prune existing roses right back by about half to prevent 'wind rock.'

Take off any frost damaged shoots from evergreens that have already been damaged by cold weather, and then remove any reverted green shoots on hardy variegated evergreens. Keeping everything pruned back and tidy over winter will ensure that in spring you have a garden to be proud of.