Pruning - Abelia grandiflora

Tues 26th Feb
Weather: 3 - 4°C. Still quite nippy. Overcast.

I pruned an Abelia grandiflora today, it was not so straightforward. It has beautiful tints of colours all over, from their pink calyx to their reddy hued dark green leaves. In fact their very pale pinky white flowers are lightly scented from summer to autumn - there's not much not to like about this shrub. In this instance it was important to keep the shape of this semi-evergreen and maintain the graceful arches rather than taking out all the flowered stems. Each stem had non-flowered & flowered stems on it, technically they flower on the current years wood. So the key was to take out more skeletal growth & older paler stems, enough to give more vigorous reddish stems and for them to take over gradually.

In the afternoon we pored over Chiltern's seed catalogue and decided what we would like to grow for the garden or to try out. We have already done this with Thompson & Morgan and Moles Seeds.