Your Pruning Month

Follow Frances Tophill's pruning advice to prepare your plot for spring's new growth

- By Frances Tophill

January, for me, always brings a sense of new beginnings, to life and the garden. While we may not be quite at the moment when we get the first inkling of spring-your snowdrops may still be some way off, the nights long and temperatures chilly - but with everything so still, it feels like the big breath in before the season begins to slowly crank up and things get growing again in a month or so.

For now, the garden is quiet and bare. But with nothing stirring there is no particular hurry and we can tackle big jobs in a leisurely way. Renovation pruning is often best done when plants are dormant - in other words, now. We also work our way through big jobs such as pollarding, coppicing and orchard pruning (but not plums or cherries), as well as the smaller cutting back of things like herbaceous perennials that have finally succumbed to cold weather and no longer provide food and shelter for wildlife. January is a fantastic time to get into the back of the beds and prune shrubs without trampling plants, but make sure you do it when the soil is relatively dry, so that it doesn't get compacted.

Controlling older philadelphus

Older philadelphus plants can become congested and gnarly, so go for a hard prune while the shrub is dormant. It will soon re-grow vigorously. Any thicker stems may require a saw rather than secateurs - wear gardening gloves to protect your hands from the sharp blade.

Other plants to prune now

We should expect plenty of frosts to immediately follow the cuts we make now, therefore, this is the time for pruning really hardy plants that need to be tackled when totally dormant.