I'm at Hidcote in Gloucestershire, one of the finest gardens in the world.
Horticultural standards here are really high, and there's much to be learnt from the team.
Today Head Gardener Lottie Allen is going to show us how they prune their hydrangeas.
Hi Lottie. Hello. You've got loads of different hydrangeas here at Hidcote haven't you?
Yes. A fair few. Quite a few of the macrophylla types,
the lace caps, and the mop heads. And then things like the arborescens.
And things like aspera as well. Aspera, the really big shrubby ones. Yes, which are stunning and
actually don't need as much really in the way of routine maintenance to some of the others.
But they catch the light really lovely even when they've finished flowering.
Yeah, all the dead heads are looking really architectural aren't they. Do you leave them on as long as possible?
Yeah, generally speaking they look good at this time of year. It's probably the only thing
of any sort of flower really. And we sometimes cut some of them and use them in the house as well.
So when's the right time to prune them then? We go for about this time of year.
So sort of late winter into spring. You can just see the buds starting to really
start to push their way up, so that's a good time for us. Okay so this is a macrophylla type?
Yes, and as you can see we've got a few around here. This one is slightly congested
so I think what we'll do is a routine prune but we'll also take some of the older stuff out.
Okay so show me the routine pruning that everyone has to do on their mop heads and their lace caps.
Okay. So it's very simple. The buds are at this stage in the game of swelling so
it's really sort of a nice job but really what you're looking for is from the tip, you're
going down and you're looking for the first set of healthy strong buds and just cutting there.
So it's a very very light tip approach just to encourage that new growth. Sometimes it's more obvious than others.
And you need to sort of trace it back a bit further, and obviously just taking out those
smaller bits that aren't going to make good flower. Okay, great. So all the flowers are off now,
and for many people with a young plant that's pretty much all you need to do isn't it? Yes.
But what else are you going to do? So having taken off the majority of the flower heads
what I would look to do is an overall prune just so that it neatens it up.
It's much better to prune this sort of thing with secateurs than a hedge cutter.
But you do want to get sort of an overall form of the shrub, and you also want to think about things
like the path. So there it's already sort of pushing out into the path. It will do with growth,
so actually pushing it back in now gives it that sort of opportunity to be a bit softer.
And that's fine to be on the path but not so it's taking up half the path.
Okay, so that's rounding off, that's just a bit more trimming back to say the next the next pair of buds down if needed.
Alright. And then are you also going to remove some of the bigger stems as well? Yes.
So as I said this is quite congested in here and it'll take time to open that up again,
but we can choose some of the older stems to start that process.
They say not to take more than a third but I wouldn't even be looking at that at this stage.
I'm just slowly starting to take the older growth out. There's some particularly good ones here
where it's quite weak growth anyway. So if we can take that out, and we take that out right to the stem just down there
to let it re-shoot from the base. So it's just the older stems that you're going to be looking to take out?
It'll be the older stems but I'll also be looking for any of the stems that might have died,
and some that might have disease or that they've been damaged.
They've crossed over, they've broken for whatever reason. None of that will make good growth, if any growth at all.
So it's worth taking that out at the same time. Okay, and so this is just because this
is actually quite a mature plant that's got a bit congested and needs that air flow, and
stimulate growth from the base. Definitely. And there's some leaves that have fallen down there as well.
So clearing all that out will just help with the general health of the plant.
Okay, so this is arborescens type and you prune this bit differently? Yes. So the books say
to go down to 25 centimetres or thereabouts for a core structure and let that come.
We tend to prune them slightly higher than that so that there's longer, older growth
which gives a structure and gets us flower at a slightly higher point. It tends to mean that the flowers are
slightly larger and there's less of them but that works for us. We've got herbaceous plants all around
that are just that bit taller so we want people to be able to see those flowers.
Okay. So you're cutting back to a woody framework that sits above the herbaceous plants. Yeah.
Okay, show me what that looks like. So we're going back, you can just about see the framework here,
and what we're looking for is the young growth. So last year's growth, so those slimmer bits.
They look slightly darker now, and going right down to the first bud from the old stem just there.
Okay yeah, I see. So rather than just clipping back to the top buds.
It's the first buds from the old rather than from the top. And you usually do this sort of late
winter is that right? Yes particularly up here in the cold Cotswolds,
you wouldn't want to do it a lot sooner. But we've got a lovely day for it so we can get on with it.
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