Hi! I am Mitch Baker with American Plant in Bethesda. We are talking about winterizing your ornamental garden; right now pruning is the topic. Fall is a great time to prune many trees, shrubs and plants in your garden. We’re going to start with this shrub rose; this is one of the Knock Out roses.
Now the only thing we are going to do this fall is take out some of this growth that may be damaged by ice or snow during the winter. The hard pruning, we will wait until spring to do that. So right now just a light pruning, just pruning out that leggy growth, the tall leggy growth that would be damaged by ice and snow, the weight of ice and snow. The reason we wait until spring to do the hard pruning, chances are there is going to be some winter die back anyway and in spring we’ll be able to evaluate the extent of that damage and prune accordingly.

Also, pruning in the spring like that stimulates with nice, strong flash of new growth and that’s what we want. This is strong flash of new growth. So pruning now or trimming now, we’re just taking out that tall leggy growth. Again, that may be damaged by the weight of ice and snow. I think that’s all for pruning this rose needs for the winter. Let’s go take a look at a crape myrtle.