How to Prune Grevilleas - Part 1

good day welcome to I cultivate my name is Steve and today we're going to be looking at pruning gilat gilas are probably the most popular Australian native plant grown in gardens today they're mainly grown for their really showy flowers of which there are many varieties but today we're going to be focused on pruning gilas something that doesn't receive enough attention many people will plant an Australian native and then think that it's okay to be left for the rest of its life but if you do that you're going to limit the quality of flowers and the quality of growth that you're going to get through its life so let's address a few questions first firstly why pruning gravias well gilas as mentioned before are Australian native plants and particularly if they are growing in their native environment they can become quite large and when large they can become quite laggy and easily break so we don't want branches breaking uncontrollably secondly the reason why many of us plant gilas is because we want that show of flowers pruning helps to promote flowering so the next question when do we prune gilas well the best time to prune gilas is mid to late spring in Australia of course we're talking around that October November time and the last question how well let's have a look at that but before we do that this gravila here is one that I pruned about 10 weeks ago and you can you can see lots of New Growth that has occurred since the pruning and new flowers as well that's only after about 10 weeks so let's get into pruning this particular gravila here the good news about pruning gravil is that there is no real science to it it's really just about printing it to the shape that you like but with a couple of other little things to consider so with the shape of this gravila in mind let's get into it you're going to need another number of different tools depending upon the size of the branches you're going to cut a heavy pruning saw perhaps heavy shears or alternatively just your standard garden shears but these are the sorts of tools you will need let's get into it [Music] [Music] so there we have it to some that will seem a fairly harsh pruning but I know that I'm going to be rewarded with some fantastic growth over the coming months and that growth will also include some wonderful displays of flowers which is of course after all the reason why I'm growing this plant and the local Wildlife they birds and you can hear them around the place they'll love it as well in a few months time I'll come back and I'll give you another look at this plant and you can see the benefits that I will have been rewarded with as a result of this pruning so a few things to remember gilas can be pruned quite heavily you can take them back as much as 2/3 in fact I've even seen them take them back further prun prune to the shape that you desire but as with pruning of all plant make sure that you remove as many of those crossing over branches as possible because branches that cross over they rub they wear off bark and they leave the plant vulnerable to disease you don't often see Grail is used as a hedge but you can see here that if looked after well gilas can actually form quite a nice hedge so so that's a different way to consider using gilas in your garden I hope you've enjoyed this video can I please ask you to go down to the thumbs up and give give us a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and go to our website I cultivate Donnet and join the community thanks for watching [Music]