Winter pruning: what to cut and what to leave alone

Late winter is the best pruning window for most woody plants, with a few important exceptions.

Why dormant pruning works

No leaves means you can see structure. Cuts made before growth starts heal quickly, and there is no risk of pushing soft growth into frost.

Good candidates

Most deciduous trees and shrubs for structural work: crossing branches, dead wood, weak crotches, and anything growing into the house or a path.

Leave these alone

Spring-flowering shrubs — lilac, forsythia, many viburnum — set their buds the previous year. Winter pruning removes this year's flowers. Prune those right after they finish blooming.

Snow damage

Broken branches from ice load get cleaned up as soon as they are noticed, cut back to a proper collar rather than left as a stub.

Cedar hedges

Avoid heavy winter cutting into cedar. It does not reliably regrow from bare wood, and a mistake there takes years to disappear.

Seasonal maintenance