Winter Pruning Made Simple: What to Cut and What to Leave
June and July are pruning season on the Peninsula. Most deciduous plants are dormant, the sap has stopped flowing, and you can see the structure of bare branches clearly. It’s the perfect time to shape, thin, and rejuvenate.
But pruning makes people nervous, and fair enough — cut the wrong thing at the wrong time and you lose a season of flowers or fruit. Here’s the straightforward version.
Roses — The Big One
Late June to mid-July is the classic rose pruning window for our area. The basic approach:
- Remove dead, damaged, and diseased wood first. You can spot dead wood because it’s grey or brown inside when you cut. Healthy wood is white or pale green.
- Remove thin, spindly growth. Anything thinner than a pencil can go.
- Remove branches that cross through the middle. You want an open vase shape that lets air circulate.
- Cut remaining canes back by about one-third to one-half. Cut to an outward-facing bud (the little bump on the stem), about a centimetre above the bud, at a slight angle.
Don’t overthink it. Roses are incredibly forgiving. Even a rough prune is better than no prune at all.
Fruit Trees
Stone fruit (plums, peaches, nectarines, apricots) — prune in winter while dormant. Open up the centre, remove crossing branches, and take out any dead wood. Peaches and nectarines fruit on last year’s growth, so don’t remove all the new wood.
Citrus — don’t prune citrus hard in winter. They’re evergreen and don’t go dormant. A light tidy to remove dead wood and shape is fine, but heavy pruning should wait until after fruiting.
Deciduous fruit trees (apples, pears) — prune to an open vase or central leader shape. Remove water shoots (those vertical whippy branches) and thin out crowded growth.
Ornamental Trees and Shrubs
Hydrangeas — one of the most commonly mispruned plants. Don’t cut them to the ground. Remove spent flower heads, cutting back to the first fat pair of buds below the old flower. Remove one or two of the oldest, woodiest stems at the base to encourage new growth.
Crepe Myrtle — light pruning only. Remove seed heads and thin crossing branches. Do not “crepe murder” them by chopping them back to stumps — it ruins their beautiful branching structure.
Deciduous ornamentals (Japanese Maple, ornamental pears) — minimal pruning. Remove dead or crossing branches and leave the natural shape alone.
What NOT to Prune Now
- Spring-flowering shrubs like Camellias, Azaleas, and Rhododendrons — they’ve already set their flower buds. Prune these after they flower in spring.
- Australian natives — most don’t respond well to hard pruning in winter. Prune after flowering.
- Evergreen hedges — wait until spring growth starts.
The One Rule
If in doubt, less is more. You can always go back and take more off. You can’t glue a branch back on.