• Home
  • Features
  • Talks
  • Learn with me

Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Tag Archives: winter jasmine

Taming winter jasmine

05 Monday Mar 2007

Posted by sallynex in pruning

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

winter jasmine

I have one client who really loves winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) – she has it across one entire wall of her very beautiful 17th-century house. She was wondering why it was getting leggy and hardly flowering at all, so she asked me to sort it out.

Well, once I got up close and personal, it was pretty obvious what had been going on. In an attempt to keep this sometimes unruly shrub back against the wall, she had been trimming it much like a hedge all summer. Result – all the sun-ripened growth which should have borne this winter’s flowers had been chopped right off. The plant had been trying to replace its lost flowers by producing more and more shoots, which were then also trimmed, resulting in a plant that looked like it had bottle-brushes on the end of its stems! The long, whippy woody stems hadn’t been encouraged to produce the usual green flower-bearing shoots from lower down, so they had also remained bare and the whole thing was in a truly sorry state.

Fortunately it was reasonably easy to put right. I trimmed back the older long whippy shoots to cut off the bottle-brushes, then took out a few of them to reduce the density. The few green shoots which remained I’ve cut back to a couple of buds from the main stems – which you should do annually at this time of year, after flowering, to keep them productive.

With a bit of luck, next year the plants will be producing new strong growth from the base, and the dormant buds on the woody framework stems should spring into life. My poor client got a (gentle!) lecture from me about leaving well alone during the year and tying in wayward shoots rather than chopping them off – and I left her, and her plants, a lot happier.

It’s such a shame that so often plants which perform beautifully are prevented from doing so by sheer ignorance about how they do what they do (often by the most well-meaning of people). Mind you, it’s also what makes my job so satisfying – I can fix a lot of these kinds of problems relatively easily, and am treated like a magician when miraculously the plant does what it wanted to do all along!

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • September 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006

Categories

  • book review
  • chicken garden
  • children gardening
  • climate change
  • container growing
  • cutting garden
  • design
  • education
  • end of month view
  • exotic edibles
  • France
  • Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
  • garden design
  • garden history
  • garden words
  • gardening without plastic
  • Gardens of Somerset
  • giveaways
  • greenhouse
  • herbs
  • kitchen garden
  • landscaping
  • my garden
  • new plants
  • new veg garden
  • news
  • overseas gardens
  • Painting Paradise
  • pick of the month
  • plant of the month
  • pond
  • poultry
  • pruning
  • recipes
  • seeds
  • self sufficiency
  • sheep
  • shows
  • sustainability
  • this month in the garden
  • Uncategorized
  • unusual plants
  • videos
  • walk on the wild side
  • wildlife gardening
  • wordless wednesday

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy