Trimming a Teucrium Fruiticans hedge

tjb272

I have a small (2ft high x 15ft long) Teucrium Fruiticans hedge around the edge of my front garden. Never really taken a lot of care to cut it correctly but its never really failed to give some nice summer colour.  I've only ever cut it back to a tidy shape at about 2ft high.

Its gotten a bit unruly currently and I'd like to really understand what it needs and get the best from it.

When and how should I trim it up.  RHS says pruning group 7 and cut it back hard..

Whilst the lower growth is pretty woody that seems very drastic and I dont want to kill it off and of course I'd like to keep the hedge shaping if poss.

Anyone any advice ?

Borderline

It's more to do with how tall you want to keep your shrub. If you want to keep them at 2 ft tall, then a a prune in early spring to around a foot in height will be fine. Leaving them to grow taller and snipping lightly over the early spring time works too. The yearly cut helps to keep them more bushy and fresh. If allowed to get overgrown, they can be pruned back to encourage new growth.

With winters being quite wet in the UK, I would leave pruning into mid spring. This helps to keep the cold winter wet away from the root areas.

Nollie

I usually prune mine back quite hard in late winter/early spring (but agree with Borderline, late spring in the UK is probably better). However, mine are flowering already as it’s unusually mild here - normally its regularly -5 or less by this time at my altitude. They seem to recover well from the necessary hard prune, but I have never let them grow big enough to have to prune into thick woody stems so sorry, I don’t know if cutting into hard wood would be to their benefit or precipitate their demise...