Summer Pruning Guide with Alan Titchmarsh: Key Plants and Techniques

Summer Pruning Essentials

• 🌳 Trained fruit trees, such as stepovers and espaliers, benefit from summer pruning by pinching out shoots to encourage flower and fruit formation for the following year.
• 🍐 Pears, young plum trees, damsons, and cherry trees can also be pruned in summer to encourage shape and reduce the risk of diseases like silver leaf disease.

Topiary and Evergreen Care

• ✂️ Topiary specimens, including boxwood, should be clipped in late summer to maintain their crisp shape through winter. Clipping in cloudy weather or rain can prevent browning.
• 🍃 Choisya, or Mexican orange blossom, should be pruned after its spring flowers fade in early to midsummer to maintain its shape and encourage new growth.

Rose and Lavender Pruning

• 🌹 For roses, deadheading should involve cutting back shoots about a foot to thicker growth, promoting a stronger second flush of flowers later in the summer.
• 💜 Lavender bushes can be pruned just as their flowers are at their best or beginning to fade. Cutting back encourages new shoots before autumn, keeping the bushes youthful and long-lasting.

Specific Plant Pruning Tips

• 🍑 Peaches and nectarines, especially those trained on walls, can have outward-growing shoots (breastwood) pruned back in summer with no negative consequences.
• 💡 Always prune out any dead wood found on plants, regardless of the season.