Talked to a lady at the nursery who flipped my whole view on pruning

I was at Armstrong Garden Center in Pasadena last Saturday looking for some new pots and this older woman working there stopped me from buying some shears. She said I was overthinking it and that most people kill their plants by being too careful. She pointed at this scraggly rosemary bush and said you gotta cut it back hard sometimes or it just gets woody and dies. I always thought pruning was this delicate science but she made it sound more like common sense. She told me about a time she hacked back a rose bush to almost nothing and it came back twice as big that season. It hit different because she wasn't selling me anything, just giving real talk. Has anyone else had a random employee or gardener change how you treat your plants?

2 comments

2 Comments

vera_murphy1mo ago

Used to treat pruning like surgery but this makes way more sense. Cutting hard is probably what most plants actually need.

campbell.tara1mo ago

Have you come across that study from the Chicago Botanic Garden? They tested different pruning methods on shrubs and the ones that got cut back the hardest actually came back stronger and fuller. Something about the plant putting all its energy into new growth instead of trying to maintain old, woody bits. Your mileage may vary of course, but I've seen it work wonders on my overgrown lavender.