What you Need for Pruning Azaleas

Flowering azaleas adorn the gardens with stunning beauty and bright colors every spring. These hardy shrubs can grow up to eight feet and are easy to care for once established. However, keeping them shaped and trimmed would allow the air to circulate, prevent diseases, and aid overall health. 

Follow the simple guidelines in this article for pruning azaleas correctly and keep them blooming every year.

When to Prune the Azaleas

Usually, azaleas are relatively low-maintenance shrubs and need no pruning. They can produce beautiful flowers every season. However, if your azalea is oversized and you need to trim it down, it might need a little pruning. Knowing the best time to prune it will keep your shrub healthy and thriving every year. You might also want to consider pruning if your azalea isn’t blooming well and produces fewer flowers.

The best time to prune azaleas is to do so after spring or within the three weeks they stop blooming once the flowers fade away or shrivel. Make sure not to trim them any later than July. Pruning azaleas late in the summer, autumn, or winter will cut off the flower buds, adversely affecting next year’s bloom. While pruning, don’t chop big chunks of the shrub and maintain its size by removing brittle sprigs so that new sections can take place.

Most azaleas need a little trimming for maintenance. The best way is to cut off any dead stems and branches and then gently prune the live stems to attain your desired shape. If your azalea has overgrown to a large size, you can cut it down with loppers to about one foot without resulting in any long-term damage to it. Azalea branches can sometimes develop fungus, damaging the leaves and branches. To prevent the spread of the fungus, prune back your azalea until you see white-colored wood.

For maintenance pruning, use clippers to remove long stray shoots next to larger woody branches. Doing this will even out the foliage and make room for air and sunlight movement in the center, which helps in healthy growth. Also, cut back any large or thick branches with loppers to create a mounding shape.

Before pruning, ensure that your tools have sharp and clean blades.

What you Need for Pruning Azaleas

To prune azaleas, you’ll need tools like hand pruners and loppers. If you don’t have one already, you’ll also need a pair of gloves and disinfecting tools. It’s not a good idea to use hedge trimmers to shear azaleas into shapes, such as boxes or squares. Because the way the branches continue to grow doesn’t help in retaining the shapes, and as a result, the shrub will look bizarre. Also, it causes the flowers to grow only in the bush’s outer inch. Electric hedge clippers will result in the growth of small and twiggy branches with sparse foliage. It’s best to use hand trimmers to give the shrub a soft, mounded shape.   

Let’s learn more about the tools below and where to buy them.

1) Pruning Shears or Hand-Clippers

If you want a small tool for controlled pruning, pruning shears or hand clippers are a great option. Gardeners use secateurs (hand pruners) almost every day in gardening. If you’re making your first purchase of this tool, it’s a good idea to consider a few things before doing so, such as the type of pruning you’re going to perform, the size of your plants, your operating style (anvil, ratchet, or bypass), and the length of your hands or your strength. You can find pruners of different sizes, grip designs, and left or right-handed actions.  

Below are our top picks for the best pruners.