Monty Don reveals the four gardening jobs you must get done in June to encourage ‘maximum’ growth
AS the weather heats up, more and more people will begin to spend time in their gardens, enjoying the sunshine.
But if you want your outdoor space to impress this summer, you’ll need to pay attention.
Gardening expert Monty Don has shared the four pruning jobs that you must get done this month, to encourage ‘maximum’ growth for your garden.
Pruning is a very important gardening job, done throughout the year to help promote flowering and health in plants, flowers and trees.
But it is important that gardeners don’t prune at the wrong times of year as this could permanently damage what they are pruning.
So if you want your loved ones to be left open-mouthed with your greenery, then you’ll need to listen up.
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Wisteria
Sharing advice in his , Monty Don wrote: “Wisteria produces its flowers on new growth, which in turn emerges from spurs off the main shoots.
“When they have finished flowering - and for most of us that is around the middle of June - it is time to prune all this year’s new shoots back to a spur.
“Leave no more than six inches of growth. In the process, the whole plant can be tidied, trained and tied in so that there are no loose, trailing shoots.”
Monty recommended erring on the side of cutting too lightly, as this means in the New Year, when all of the foliage has died, it can be pruned again, reducing each side shoot to just two or three inches.
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Early flowering shrubs
According to Monty, Britons should also prune flowering shrubs such as philadelphus, amelanchier, deutzia, weigela and rubus this month.
He said: “This will give the new growth plenty of time to ripen before winter and thus bear maximum flowers next spring.
“Mature shrubs should be pruned hard, cutting back most of the flowering stems to a healthy new shoot and taking the oldest growth right back to the base so it is completely renewed every three or four years.
“A very overgrown shrub should be renewed in this gradual manner too.”
After they have been pruned, they will need to be weeded, watered and mulched to take semi-ripe cuttings from healthy, straight non-flowering pruned stems.”
Deadheading roses
Thirdly, the gardening whizz explained that deadheading roses is “really worth doing” at least once a week to help prolong their flowering period.
Deadheading is a form of pruning which involves selectively removing any spent flowers from the flower.
To do so, simply pull off the old flower heads and cut back to the first leaf below the spent flower, where a new shoot will emerge.
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Clematis montana
Finally, Monty Don claimed that gardeners should also prune overcrowded, dead or diseased stems of climatic montana once it has finished flowering.
Untangling stems can be fiddly, but it doesn’t matter where it is cut and it will take a hard cutting very well.