Hydrangea with last year's flowers still intact. (Photo by Mark Torregrossa | MLive.com)

The time is now to grab the pruners and get your shrubs and bushes back in shape.

Pruning a shrub is meant to achieve one of several objectives. First, some of these shrubs look really nice near your house one season, and the next year look like we did with no haircuts during the beginning of the pandemic. Next, the shape of a bush can be fine-tuned by pruning. Finally, the flowering shrubs send out blooms galore with proper pruning.

Jerry Somalski, owner of Bay Landscaping in Essexville, MI, says the best time to prune is when you have time. His saying is, “Prune when the shears are sharp.”

Hydrangea with last year's flowers still intact. (Photo by Mark Torregrossa | MLive.com)

I started the conversation worried if it was too late to prune my tree hydrangeas in front of the house. They grow so fast just in one season. If I don’t prune them back heavily each year, they overtake the rest of the front-of-house look.

Somalski eased my worries. He said it is absolutely the perfect time to prune back the tree hydrangea.

One of the issues in pruning a particular flowering shrub is you may cut the flower buds off. Somalski has a rule of thumb for us. If the shrub blooms after June 10, its flowers form on the wood growing this year in April and May. It’s a great time to cut these flowering shrubs so we will have a more compact growth this spring. Jerry says if the shrubs bloom before June 10, the flower buds already formed last year. If you prune those shrubs now, you will be cutting off this spring’s flower buds.

Lilacs and forsythias are two common spring bloomers that already have flower buds. Don’t prune them now if you want color soon. But Somalski also says you may have to sacrifice a spring of blooms if you need to get an overgrown lilac or forsythia back to a desired size. He says lilacs and forsythia are two shrubs you can cut down to a few inches above the ground and have them grow back into a new shrub.

Somalski recommends this plant finder page on the Missouri Botanical Garden website. If you see the flowering shrub listed as an April or May bloomer, leave the plant alone now. If the blooming time is June, get the shrub back into the shape and style you want.

Hydrangea with last year's flowers still intact. (Photo by Mark Torregrossa | MLive.com)

You can always trim off a wild branch here or there, even if you aren’t supposed to be fully pruning a spring blooming plant, according to the landscaping expert.

Somalski also gives us some enjoyable homework. He says to just watch the plants this year. If you don’t know when a shrub blooms, watch it this spring and summer. Take notes of when the plant blooms.

The next few days with afternoon temperatures in the 50s and 60s will be great days to set the formation of your landscape for the summer.

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