hi there my name is John Holden I graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in ornamental horticulture in 1993 I started land designs unlimited I design install and maintain landscapes for homeowners in Upper Fairfield County Connecticut today I'd like to share my passion with you how you doing today folks you know it's late April and I'm out and I'm going to do some pruning today and you know I've got my thermals on I stepped out of the house it was 44 degrees there's this cold wind blowing and this has got to be the coldest winter I know it's the coldest winter we've ever had but I just can't believe this winter we'll just not give up you know yesterday I was out it was a nice day it was like 65 I had a good sweat going and today it's going to rain later but I mean it's just a crazy year what I want to do today folks is show you how to prune a Rose of Sharon because I think a lot of people don't really know how to prune it you know it flowers later summer and it's one of those shrubs that people you know you come around in the spring you look at your roses share and you say yeah it's fine but by the time you get to prune it later in the year you're actually going to end up pruning off some of the flowers whenever you're pruning a flowering shrub the first question you need to ask yourself or research is when does this flower what does this flower on does this flower on the current seasons growth or does it flower on the previous seasons growth there's a flower on new wood or old wood now Rose of Sharon actually flowers our new wood which means it's okay to prune in the early spring the reason I want to prune this shrub is because it's just by the time the summer comes I come out to do some pruning of boxwood and such so by June July this Rose of Sharon starts to flop over and you know if it's a rainy day there's another one by the walkway here if it's a rainy day it flops over the walkway and it's just it's out of control for lack of a better term so what we're going to do today we're going to go through and we're going to prune out any Deadwood we see and then we're going to go through and cut any branches that cross and rub against each other we're going to save either the healthier branch or we're going to save the branch that is growing to the direction we want outside the shrub we're going to cut any branches that are growing into the shrub that are growing kind of in a bad direction and then finally what we want to do is just take it back a little bit make it a little bit shorter and by doing it now before the growth comes on the plant we're going to have this Rose of Sharon just ready to flush out it's going to have room to grow you know that the branches will be shorter so it's not going to be too heavy and it's just going to be gorgeous so right down here we've got this branch that's coming off at this funky angle and then growing back up and it's kind of twining in with some other branches so we're just going to go ahead and take our pruning saw and cut this one out and then there's this one branch over here that somebody had cut a few years back that is just kind of growing out it's going to have all this new branches growing on it and it's going to be over the lawn making a mess so we'll go ahead and cut this one out too if you follow this branch down it's it's choking these two branches here it's like there's this big squish going on so we're going to clear this one out it's in the middle of the shrub we're going to clear this one out so it doesn't congest the middle of the shrub I'm going to have to do this one in two cuts and I'm going to sneak around to the back whatever you can do to get the best angle to prune so you don't end up cutting the wrong branch with your saw or nicking another branch the better now over on this side there's like a stub here that was cut off with the best of intentions but it's causing just a flush of a bunch of growth at the base of the shrub that's going to really congesting so I'm going to I'm going to prune this one out too and this is definitely it can get tricky to make your cuts on these over here we've got a branch coming from inside the shrub it's wrapping around and then it's heading up and you can see there's a little bit of rubbing going on here so we're going to take this one out if we move in this direction there's a there's a stepping stone path and this branch I half of me wants to leave it but I'm afraid that as this branch grows up it's kind of reaching for the Sun it's going to keep heading towards that path so I'm going to go ahead and take this one off Rose of Sharon is a very fast grower so you kind of have to plan ahead and then this one's kind of congested so we'll get rid of that one too a little congested over here you've got one in the back here just got a branch up my nose I've got one in the back here that starts out okay comes up and then it kind of bows back towards the middle so we're going to go ahead and take this one off too and these bigger branches I'll do in two cuts just so I can get the second cut right where I want it you'll be amazed once you go through and prune out any crossing branches any branches going back towards the center of the shrub any dead branches you know most of your your structural pruning is done and there's really not going to be a lot more to do on the inside of the shrub I know I had some stubs in there that were you know pruned a few years ago but once you to do that now you can more focus on the smaller branches and you know take a look around for smaller branches growing back into the middle of the shrub stuff that's growing in a direction we don't want I mentioned that there's a path over here if there's something growing towards the path so that's what we're going to do now at this part of the plant there's a whole bunch of suckers but all these suckers are going nice and upright they're not spreading out from the shrub I like the way they're growing so I might thin out a couple of them and just favor they're the strongest but I'm not going to do much with any suckers that are growing straight up and looking nice if I see some suckers coming out that are really leaning away from the shrub I'm definitely going to do something about that I'm having a little bit of a hard time focusing I've got a Robin chirping its head off over there trying to get my attention and when I walked up to the shrub I saw it fly away and the tree we're working at is right here and her nest is right here and she's got three eggs she's got three eggs in there so I'm going to try to get this done as quick as I can so she can get back to her duties as a mom and those eggs are okay so here's us some small branches growing towards the center we're going to go ahead and clip those out here's a sucker in the middle kind of growing towards the center in the middle of the shrub here we've got one of the probably one of the original stamens when the shrub was planted and it grows up and then it spreads out at the top and by spreading out its blocking light to the rest of the shrub and it's taking a lot of the energy from the younger the younger branches so what I'm going to do with this one is just go ahead and take it out and that way the energy can go to these other smaller shrubs and we'll also control the height of this Rose of Sharon and I'm going to do this in two cuts I'm going to cut it high then I'll go down and cut it low because this is a pretty big branch the shrub will develop the habit all by itself all you need to do is cut out the the weaknesses for lack of a better term and now the neighbor's dog which is a giant German Shepherd is saying hi to me over there - got a stub right here there's only about 18 inches this is actually dead dead it died so we'll take that off is I'm just going to go up in the in the shrub and see if I can tip the thing and get it to be maybe eight feet tall some of them you know I don't want to just cut the whole top of the shrub but if I can cut them cut a main branch down to a V that's going to be shorter I'll do that I've got the the main stem and then I've got these two side branches so we're just going to go ahead and cut the main stem and leave those side branches and then up top I will cut off this big thick part so folks there is our end result and I'm so happy I got out here early you want to do this pruning when the shrub is dormant it's just starting to break bud now but you really want to get it early in the season it's easier to see in there and that's really the right time to do it but I'm just so happy that the shrub now is opened up it's pruned when it has it's flush of growth this will easily put on two to three feet of growth over the summer it's not going to be weighted down there's air you know air can move through the shrub light can move through the shrub and it's just going to be a much healthier shrub so I'm going to see if I can move real quick and get out of the way the Robin and hopefully she can get back to her eggs thanks a lot for watching folks and have a wonderful day you