Two to three times during the season, you can find me trimming our hanging baskets. As I write this, it is only early March, but we have already planted our hanging baskets for the season (Go, Team!). This means that our hanging baskets get a head start and look incredible by the time you’re ready to buy them. It feels really rewarding to design, plant, and care for our hanging baskets from scratch; our hanging baskets are the definition of buying local! But as annuals grow, certain types like trailing petunias tend to get long and lanky. Don’t get me wrong: a trailing petunia is gorgeous! But if it isn’t trailing gradually, the long vines will become too heavy, and the flowers will disappear at the top, leaving the middle of your baskets kind of bare-looking.

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To keep that from happening, we trim the baskets. Trimming the baskets is an exercise in patience: it’s all about imagining what the basket will look like with time and care. When I trim a basket, I draw an imaginary circle about an inch or two outside the basket, and I cut off everything that fall outside that line. I remember the days – some eons ago –when I first started trimming the baskets and I felt a little sad: it does look a little tragic, to see all those flowers falling to the ground. But I’m now long past feeling sad! I feel nothing but optimism as I cut off the leaves, flowers, and stems, knowing that these baskets will produce twice as many flowers as a result. What’s more, the baskets will keep a beautiful shape because of this much-needed “haircut,” resulting in baskets that can last as long as the temperatures stay mild. Like I say: it’s a Zen state of mind!

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Why does this work?

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Annual flowers are named thusly because they must be planted annually, as in, every year. Unlike you and I, who have a life-expectancy of 70-ish years, most annuals only have a single season before they must shuffle off these mortal coils. I often tell people that annuals have only one life purpose: to produce flowers. And if you remove those flowers, t’s as if they wake up and say, “Hey, where did my flowers go?!” and they immediately start producing more. If you can trim your annuals – especially hanging baskets! – two to three times in a season, they will keep producing beautifully throughout the summer. Trimming won’t work for many perennials (with a few exceptions!) because plants like lilies or irises produce once and then are done for the season. That’s why it’s good to grow a selection of perennials that bloom at different times, or blend your beds with perennials and annuals, so you can have lots of blooming colour all season.

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Deadheading

Deadheading means to remove the spent blooms. This helps to create more blooms but doesn’t control the shape in the same way that pruning does. You can use a combination of both pruning and deadheading to encourage floral growth.

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You may have noticed some annuals called “self-deadheading”: this means that the flower naturally falls off on its own. However, with self-deadheading petunias in particular, such flowers may get stuck to the leaves. These plants simply require a firm shake periodically to get rid of the spent flowers. Other annuals such as verbena still require manual deadheading back to the next set of leaves.

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Pruning

I’ve mostly talked about hanging baskets, but pruning can also be done on beds. Cut back petunias for bushier growth. You can choose to deadhead bedding plants like zinnias, snapdragons, and marigolds – where you remove the stem just below the spent flower – but I tend to prune these as well; again, this makes for bushy plants that produce way more flowers, and tend to be stronger in our really powerful summer winds.

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• To prune plants individually: select a stem and, ensuring that at least two sets of leaves are still on the stem, make a cut directly above a set of leaves, cutting off the remainder.
• To prune large numbers of plants: eyeball a consistent measurement – around the edge of a pot, or 5 to 6 inches above the soil – and make your cuts.

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To Prune or Not to Prune

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You can safely do a hard prune on petunias, calibrachoa (also called million bells), anagallis, and euphorbia without having to worry about what the cuts will look like later.

For plants like osteospermum, salvia, and Angelonia, be sure to prune a bit more carefully by hiding the cuts above a set of leaves or, better yet, right above a set of branching stems. If you prune these without care, you often end up with dead-looking “sticks” poking up above the arrangement. So we can avoid that by being a little more precise with our cutting.

I would recommend pruning trailing vines like silver nettle and potato vine: this will make them full and bushy! On the other hand, I do not prune silver falls dichondra nor creeping jenny: pruning these in the wrong place can make them split awkwardly and create bunches half-way down the sides of the container. Better to let those be!

Enjoy the quiet contemplation of pruning your own baskets for long-lasting flowers all summer long!