Rhododendrons are indigenous woodland plants, used to probing for light through an overhanging tree canopy.
This leads to a tendency for long, untidy growth which, when it happens in the natural habitat is an advantage but in your planting scheme you may find to be undesirable.
For cultivated rhododendrons, we are looking for compact plants with copious of flowering stems and a well rounded shape giving definition in the border or as distinctive specimen plants.
For pot grown rhododendrons, you can be really rough when it comes to pruning as these are surprisingly strong shrubs.
In the case that your container grown plant has become whippy with just a few flowering branches and plenty of seemingly bare wood, just take some sharp secateurs and cut each branch back to 15-30 cms from the bottom of the plant.
Do not worry - it may seem as if you have comprehensively killed the shrub, but amazingly it will quickly spring into action.
During the coming weeks, buds will swell along the pruned stems and as spring arrives, these buds will unfurl to form new green shoots.
A few of these shoots will develop flower buds and bloom in the same year, though in some cases, you will have to wait for the following year to get flowering as you would expect.
When it comes to pruning large rhododendrons, a lot depends on the prominence of theplant in your garden scheme.
If you need to have some flowers in the coming season, then the best policy is to prune a third of the existing stems, being sure that you do this carefully around the rhododendron.
Use a sharp tree pruning saw and cut the length of each of the stems or branches by two thirds.
In each of the next two years, do the same thing again with one third of the old shoots and then, you will have a properly pruned, rotund and floriferous shrub.
If the specimen you would like to shape has outgrown and overpowered its position and you are not too bothered about flowers in the current year, you can of course reduce all of the rhododendron's branches down by two thirds.
If you reduce the top growth of any shrub, there there will undoubtably be a shock to the plant.
To get the recently pruned plant off to the best new life, remove the top couple of centimetres of soil or compost at the bottom of the plant of weeds and and general detritus and then top dress with a good quality ericaceous compost.
These plants are ericaceous (meaning they prefer acidic soils) plants, so it is crucial that the top dressing is made especially for rhododendrons.
Caring for rhododendrons is really not very difficult and by following this simple advice, you will make sure that your rhododendrons will continue to flower for you, year after year.
Unfortunately, it seems that these plants have developed a bad reputation by the relentless spread of rhododendron Ponticum onto any waste ground, in particular next to railways. This invasive weed should not be with the strains we can grow in our backyards and which we have described here.
Should you discover that you have any rhododendron Ponticum in your garden or anywhere close to you, do not prune it - simply dig it out and kill it.
Author Resource:-
Zondra Tzuke is a keen gardener and aspiring writer. She enjoys combining these passions by creating small informative websites, focused on particular plants or techniques like www.rhododendrons.co. Read more aboutrhododendrons...
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