I have some very healthy daphne bushes full of
blooms and I am wondering if and how I should deadhead them…
or do some judicious pruning now that their
flowering season is about over. I live on Whidbey Island,
Washington. The plants are two years old and doing very well
where they are planted.
The standard advice with Daphnes is that they are
usually best left unpruned. If you need to keep them compact,
you may be able to do a little light pruning. Peter McHoy,
author of Pruning: A Practical Guide (Abbeville Press, 1993)
says that no Daphne species needs routine pruning, but it is
a good idea to remove straggly shoots in early spring. If you
do prune hard, it will be a year before flowering returns to
normal. Writing in the New York Times, August 3, 2006,
Leslie Land asks John Bieber of the Daphne Society about how to prune
if you must: “Choose a dry morning shortly after spring bloom is over. Sharpen the
shears. Cut back lightly; severe pruning is always a gamble. It is
safer to take two or three springs to downsize a badly overgrown plant.”
Another resource, with a description of the grab-and-snip pruning technique
for mounding shrubs may be found in Cass Turnbull’s The Complete
Guide to Landscape Design, Renovation and Maintenance (2006).
Although she advises against pruning Daphnes unless it’s absolutely necessary,
this technique can be used in spring. Cut off or cut back to a side branch and
branch that is lying on the ground or extending into places where you do not
want it to go. You can also remove some of the longest branches that are lying on top of other branches.
I would err on the side of conservatism, as Daphnes can be
temperamental. Since yours are doing so well, I suggest that
you only remove the bare minimum of leggy limbs, if you decide to prune.