Japanese knotweed: how do you get rid of it?
Why Japanese knotweed is so persistent, what Belgian law has said since 2025 and the methods that really work in a garden.
When should you prune hydrangeas and roses?
Pruning at the wrong time can remove all of summer’s flowers. With hydrangeas, as with roses, it all depends on the variety. Here is how to find your way.
Hydrangeas: identify the variety first
Most hydrangeas in our gardens belong to two groups, which do not flower on the same wood.
- Bigleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla), with pink or blue mophead flowers: it flowers on the previous year’s stems. In late winter, simply cut off the faded flowers just above the first pair of healthy buds, and remove a few old stems at the base.
- Panicle and smooth hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata, such as ‘Limelight’, and Hydrangea arborescens, such as ‘Annabelle’): they flower on the current year’s growth. They can be cut back hard in late winter, to two or three pairs of buds, for larger flowers.
Why leave the faded flowers on all winter?
On bigleaf hydrangeas, the dried flowers protect the buds from frost. We leave them in place until the hard frosts are over, often in March in Belgium.
Roses: the main late-winter pruning
For most bush roses and repeat-flowering roses, the main pruning takes place between late February and late March, once the worst of the cold has passed. A classic sign: when the forsythia is in flower.
- Remove dead, diseased or damaged wood.
- Take out crossing stems to open up the centre of the rose.
- Cut at a slant, about 5 mm above an outward-facing bud.
- Cut large-flowered bush roses back to three to five buds on the main stems.
Roses to prune after flowering
- Once-flowering roses, which bloom only once in spring: prune them just after flowering, otherwise you remove next year’s flowers.
- Climbing roses: keep the long main stems, trained horizontally, and shorten the side shoots that have flowered.
- In summer, regularly deadheading repeat-flowering roses encourages them to flower again.
The right tools
Clean, sharp secateurs make clean cuts, which heal better. Disinfect the blades between diseased roses so as not to spread disease. If you would rather hand this pruning over to us, we include it in our late-winter maintenance visits.
