Badly pruned hydrangea - getting it to flower
Stephanie newish gardener
Posts: 464
in Plants
Hi
I messed up with my hydrangea last year as it had got too tall so I cut it down quite a bit but it was clearly the wrong time of year as it didn't flower. It is now about the height I want it but I don't know if it will grow taller before it flowers this year.
I would like it to flower but I want to keep it to a sensible height and I'm not sure the two aspirations will work in one season.
Any thoughts please?
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Stephanie, I would leave the height and let it flower this year. However, I'd cut a lot of the old wood back to the base to encourage new growth this year.
Joyce has given some great advice there. I would try and cut back the dead wood soon whilst you can still get in there easily before the new growth appears, and the encourage new stems.
Don't do any Pruning back until the end of March. The younger Canes prune them back to the first Pair of healthy buds under the flower Head
So if I prune off some of the growth that's there, down to a pair of healthy buds, will that stem flower this year?
Hi Stephanie
You will probably get flowers this year at the end of the shoots. As you didn't have flowers last year, it's difficult to tell where to prune the shoots back to, but by end the end of March/ beginning of April, you should have some promising buds and the tips above them may well have gone brown so you can prune back to the new growth. You could also try thinning out the branches a bit, cutting some of the older (brown) branches back to the ground. You'll get vigorous new growth from the base and those stems will flower next year. That should keep it to a manageable size. That's the treatment I have resorted to with a lacecap hydrangea in my garden that gets absolutely enormous if left to its own devices. Once it's flowered, I leave the flowers to fade and leave them on until the spring when I prune back to the new buds and I thin out about a third of the older branches to keep it in check.
Good luck!