David's Secrets On How To Prune Smooth Hydrangeas (Hydrangea arborescens) Types ✂️😉👏💚👍

Well hello and welcome to Overdievest Nurseries, this is David Wilson on a beautiful sunny day in early spring. If you've been watching any of the other videos on this channel, you will have noticed that we put out a few talking about the various types of hydrangeas. We talked about the large mophead ones, they're the ones that are pink or blue, then there's the big panicle hydrangeas with their kind of conical shaped blooms that are white and sometimes go towards pink. And in the middle of it we also mentioned another type that's called hydrangea arborescens, in fact it's a native species. And out of that are some selections that have been developed over the years of which the most popular one is a big white flowered one called Annabelle. Beautiful variety and does exceptionally well, except the heads are so big sometimes they flop over. On the other hand what we like is a variety or indeed an improved version of Annabelle, this particular one here that's called Incredible. This has big strong white flowers that are sometimes up to 12 inches or so wide, beautiful with strong stocky stems and therefore it doesn't flop over so much. But within the family of the arborescens types, there's also several other ones too. Invincible Spirit is one that comes to mind, and then out of that there's different varieties, there's one called Limetta, one called Garnetta, one called Wee White, in fact a whole series of them, really beautiful and the most important thing I want to tell you is, very, very easy to grow and also easy to prune. So if you're somebody that's kind of wondering whether you can really grow hydrangeas or not, this is definitely one that you should start off with and one that you should enjoy. They're really very easy and let me show you what you do now at this time of year in early spring, and that is to prune them. It's really very simple and easy to do and this is how you do it. Now as you see, we have planted one, two, three, four, five plants here, they're going to grow about four to five foot high. These are relatively young plants, just really going into their second year, but you can see already they've started into growth, and these are the old flowers from last year, and if you look here you'll see how each of these stems has grown out, it's now making young fresh growth, and then it grew out last year, grew out, grew out, and then carried the flowers on the tips of the growth. So that gives us a clue as to how to prune them. We've planted these here, just so you know, about four or five foot apart, so one day when these grow up and fill out, this is going to be a whole series of white balls that are going to be flowering here during the summertime. If you've seen them in somebody's garden, or indeed even online, or on our websites, you can't miss them. They're absolutely gorgeous, big pristine white, very noticeable flowers during the summertime on these strong stems. Now I've probably already given the game away when I explained about how it grew out here on the current year's growth, and then carries its flowers. Like other things that flower on the current year's growth, the more it grows, the better, stronger the flower performance is going to be. So what you're looking for here really, is very, very simple. The first thing I do is go in and take all of these old dead shoots out here that are in the center of the crown. These are ones left over from, well, the year before last really, and if you take those out first, that'll begin to let you see what's going on with the plant, and immediately when I look in here now, you'll see that these are growing so strongly that they've already started to make some shoots here from the base of the clump, which is very nice, because that's exactly what we want to have happen. I should also mention that the time to do this is almost any time when the plants are not physically strong growing. That would mean you could actually probably prune these during the wintertime, or maybe even late autumn. Personally I think the best time to do it now is in early spring, and in fact maybe a week or so ago would have been the absolute ideal time, because you'll see these plants have already started to put on a little bit of growth. That really doesn't matter, it's not going to affect things, but as you see now, what I'm doing is I'm going in here and trimming these back at a couple of sets of buds from the base. Now it's no harm at all if you feel a little bit more vigorous than this in going in and cutting some back a little further, certainly the weak ones like I just did here, you can trim back a bit harder, but the main stems that are going to carry the flowers out from it here, I would prune those back a little less severely, probably taking off about two-thirds of the growth and leaving about a third if you wanted me to give you a little bit better guidance. Now these types of branches are really so forgiving that you could, if you wanted to, go back and cut them back even harder than I'm doing now. You could in fact go right back to here, but as you see what I'm doing is coming out here about two-thirds of the way down the stem and I'm just cutting it off above a set of buds. These buds are now going to grow out and they're the ones that are going to then carry the flowers during the summer time. So as you see I'm really just going around here now, there's a dead one that comes out, snipping it back at about I suppose maybe five or six inches from the base and really just chopping all of this old growth off here because now what's going to happen is that these stems are all going to grow out and they're the ones that are going to grow out and then carry the beautiful big white flowers in the summer time. Going to be gorgeous! So just to recap, the first thing to do is to go through, and in fact you don't even need your pruners often, is to take out any of these shoots here that are dead. That material there is brown and dead and breaks easily, that's why it comes out. You really don't even need a set of pruners to take it out, but it's not doing anything so you go through and take out all of these dead shoots. Then what I do is I go through and if there's any weaker, thinner shoots then I'll cut those back a little harder. But then I go through and take out some of the stronger shoots here and cut those back a little bit lighter, say to about two-thirds of the sow down the stem. And that as you see immediately now is starting to open up the plant and let light and air in at the center of the plant and encouraging the young growth that's going to come out here from the center of the plant and that's the stuff that's going to really produce all of those beautiful flowers. And then just to help it on its way and get it off to a good start, I like to put down a dressing of a well-balanced fertilizer. This is a slow-release fertilizer, so it will continue to provide nutrient right through the whole of the growing season. This is a hardy, strong-growing variety and it will really respond well to the fertilizer. The instructions tell me to put down about two or three spoonfuls per plant and that's what I'm doing, just sprinkling it around the outside here. So there you are, it could hardly be easier than that. We have now pruned the five plants, they're poised to grow out and give plenty of flowers during the summertime, and this technique you can apply to all of the other hydrangea arborescens types too. This is David Wilson, enjoy your gardening, it's good for us and it's very good for our environment too.