How to Prune Shrubs in Early Spring

Pruning shrubs is one of the most important tasks to take care of early in the spring season in order to reinvigorate the plants and promote healthy growth for the next blooming season. Join our gardening expert as he prunes a butterfly bush plant and explains the intricacies of the act.

This is Scott with Spring Hill Nurseries and I'm doing some spring cleaning around the nursery today. And I'm going to prune this butterfly bush. The reason to prune the butterfly bush is to promote new growth. And don't forget, this is a summer blooming plant so I can prune this in early spring. If you have a spring blooming plant, you do not want to prune it in the spring. You want to prune it right after it has bloomed, so you'll do that in late spring. It's really important to know before you go cutting a plant when is the right time to prune it. You can check with the nursery where you got the plant or you can go online and do some research. It's really important, you want to make sure you do it right. So, if you look here, this has been pruned a few different times and there's varying heights. I actually prefer the lower cut. I want you to prune your butterfly bushes almost nearly to the ground coz what it's going to do is, it's going to promote new growth this year and these old stems are going to get out of the way of your new growth. Pruning your butterfly bush is really easy. Like I said, I only wanted a couple of inches off the ground. The whole reason to prune it is to promote new growth for the spring. You don't have to worry about shaping it or anything like that. The pruners that I'm using here are just a common variety, they are good for anything that's about a diameter of about up to a quarter inch. And you can even get rid of some of these that have been pruned before but aren't quite short enough. Really, what you're doing is just cleaning it up. So, this is what a pruned butterfly bush looks like. Real easy! It's a couple inches off the ground here and we have plenty of room for new growth this season. It just took me a couple of minutes and it's real easy. And that's it, I'm off to the compost pile with these. Thanks for watching, I'm Scott.