Last week I encouraged you to get started cleaning up and pruning your landscape.
There are a few plants that I do not want you to prune now. This list includes all forms of lilacs, weigela, forsythia, spring-blooming spirea, mock orange, azaleas, and rhododendron. All of these shrubs have their flower buds formed in the buds of new growth, and any pruning now will remove potential flowers. For this list of shrubs, the only time to prune is immediately after they have finished blooming.
If you’re not sure if your landscape includes these shrubs or what they look like, google an image so you know before you go out with your pruning shears.
I have written before about some clump-forming perennials that get too thick and consequently lose their vigor and bloom capacity. Dwarf daylilies are an excellent example.
Often in the process of installing a landscape, plastic or fabric is used on the soil surface and covered with rock or some other mulch. A hole is cut in the fabric or plastic and the shrub or perennial is planted in that spot. The size of the hole determines how much space that plant gets to grow in.
For a single-stemmed shrub, that is not a problem. However, for a clump-forming perennial, when the plant reaches the edge of the space it is planted in, it starts to complain.
Some perennials just continue growing on top of the fabric and through the rocks, which causes its own problem. Others just start to decline because they are landlocked.
Ornamental Karl Forester Grass is a good example. As the clump grows, it spreads to the outside, leaving a dead spot in the center where it started. The base begins to look like a donut. For this perennial, you dig the entire clump, use your spade to divide it into quarters, and plant just one quarter back in the spot where you took it out.
If you do this early (before much new growth emerges), you will end up with a beautiful specimen the same growing season … do it later, and the plant will still appreciate the renewal but will probably not recover quite as quickly.
The same procedure works well for dwarf daylilies and hosta.