Garden Studios

You can have taken cuttings after the last leaves fell out of your favourite flowering bushes back inside the autumn, but when you missed that chance you could have a second chance earlier than they burst back into life in spring.

Late February to early March is the prime time to do that, although mid to late-March may match just besides in case you live north of the Midlands.

This combines well with spring pruning summer-flowering shrubs consisting of buddlejas and fuchsias, unless you really need to scale back spring-flowering shrubs because they’re too big.

The purple-flowering buddleja bush might grow like weeds round your way, but you won’t be disappointed with a yellow pom pom buddleja (Buddleja globosa), or a white-flowering buddleja, simply to make a transformation.

Buddleja White Profusion, to illustrate, may lift a dismal corner of your garden and should attract butterflies and pollinating insects just in addition to the purple varieties.

Other summer-flowering shrubs that need pruning now include hydrangeas, Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternate), Californian lilacs (Ceanothus burkwoodii), Rose of Sharon or St John’s Wort (Hypericum) and Lavatera.

You may also propagate fruit bushes comparable to blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries now using an analogous method.

Hardwood cuttings are taken from stems which might be greater than a year old and now not green and bendy – hence the name.

They must be about as long and as thin as a pencil, with a slanting cut on the top, just above a bud, and straight cut on the bottom just under a bud.

These two forms of cut are partly so that you can tell that is the pinnacle and bottom, and partly in order that rain will run off the head cut and never settle leaving the cutting vulnerable to diseases.

If there are any leaves at the cuttings, strip the lower ones

Fill a number of large plastic flower pots, just like the ones roses are available in, with potting compost – adding a handful of sand to make it slightly gritty.

This gritty texture signifies that should you push the cuttings into the compost they are going to be slightly grazed and here’s where the plant’s enzymes will assemble to take a look at to heal the plant with new cells which will become roots.

Alternatively, you could cut a half moon of bark from the ground of the cutting to encourage the identical reaction, and in case you are the boots and braces type you may dip the cuttings in rooting hormone powder.

Push the cuttings half to 2-thirds in their length into the compost – or soil in case you decide to grow your cuttings in an unused corner of the garden – then water them and put the pots in a chilly frame for defense from frosts.

Don’t forget to maintain them watered over the summer, too, and by autumn it will be obvious that have taken.

You can either transplant them in autumn into your garden, or put them of their own pot and grow them on until you want them.