Marjorie Peronto: My name is Marjorie Peronto and I'm with the University of Maine Cooperative

Extension. Today we're going to learn how to prune a lilac.

It's important to prune your lilac yearly to keep it healthy and flowering profusely.

If you leave a lilac neglected for several years it becomes very congested in the center,

which makes it more subject to diseases and it also becomes too tall so that the blossoms

are way above your head and harder for you to enjoy.

So, in pruning our lilac today we have three objectives. One, we want to keep the shrub

open so that sunlight and air can circulate into the center of the shrub. Two, we want

to stimulate growth of young, vigorous shoots. Those will be the ones that will bear lots

of flowers in the future. Three, we want to keep the shrub at a reasonable height.

It's easiest to prune a lilac and any other deciduous tree or shrub -- that is, those

that drop their leaves in the winter -- in the late winter or early spring. That would

be in March in Maine. The reason for this is, it's not actively growing and there are

no leaves on the plant to block our view, so we can really see what we're doing.

The disadvantage to this is that the flower buds for this year have already formed. They

formed last year. When I remove wood from this shrub now, I'm also decreasing this coming

spring's flower display. So, the other option is waiting until it flowers and going in immediately

after the flowers fade and doing your pruning, but for demonstration purposes we're doing

it without the leaves so you can really see what's going on.

So, there's three tools that you need when you're pruning a lilac that's been allowed

to get as large as this one. The first one is a pruning saw and a seven inch blade is

plenty to get into tight corners. I really like the folding saws because, when you're

done, you can just stick it in your pocket and keep it clean.

The second is a pair of loppers. These loppers are made to cut branches between an inch and

an inch and a half thick. OK? The saw is for larger cuts. Then the third is a pair of hand

pruners and these are made for pruning pencil-sized branches or smaller. OK? So, you're fully

equipped if you have those three.

Make sure you keep your tools sharp so that you get nice, clean cuts. If your tools are

dull, you will tear or shred or crush the branches, leaving uneven wounds that take

a lot longer to heal.

There's a couple of approaches we can take when pruning a lilac if it's old and it's

been left neglected for a number of years and it's a tangled mess of stems with very

few flowers. You might want to cut the whole thing down to within a foot of the ground.

That will stimulate it to send up new shoots but it won't start to flower for several years

and it won't look very good. So, it will go through an ugly phase.

A less dramatic approach is to do this to renovate the shrub over time, taking a little

bit out over a period of several years, which is what I'm going to demonstrate today. Now,

I've already gone in and removed a few branches beforehand for the purpose of this demonstration,

so we can more clearly see what we're looking for.

So, the first thing to look for are the oldest, thickest stems in the shrub. You want to find

those and remove up to one third of them. This will do two things. It will open up the

center of the shrub and it will also bring the height of the shrub down, because the

oldest stems also tend to be the tallest. You want to remove them as close to the ground

as possible.

You may need to take them out in stages, to avoid wounding other branches in the shrub.

The bark on young lilac shoots is very thin and fragile, so it's very easy to create wounds,

so we want to be careful and make very precise cuts.

The second thing to look for after you've removed a few of the oldest, thickest stems,

is what is called the three Ds. That's dead, damaged and diseased wood.

Dead wood is brittle and has no plumb buds on it. It's easy to see and that should come

out at any time. Damaged and diseased wood should be cut back to healthy wood or removed

entirely.

The third thing to look for is crossing, rubbing branches. When two branches are crossing and

rubbing, as they grow they get thicker and thicker and they create a wound there, at

that surface, which is an entry place for disease organisms. So, we want to alleviate

that problem.

Then we look for any drooping branches that are hanging down too low and cut those off

to a healthy side shoot. Lastly we take out pencil-thin suckers that are coming up from

the base or twiggy growth that is cluttering the base of the plant and then if there's

anything that's growing outside the boundaries of the plant, where you want it to grow, that

should be removed as well.

Most or all of the cuts that you make on your lilac are thinning cuts. Those are cuts where

you remove an entire branch or an entire stem at its point of origin to open up that plant.

Here we have the finished product for this year. We have removed a lot of large stems

from the center, I've taken out some crossing rubbing branches, a lot of the dead wood...

All the dead wood I could find, drooping branches, little spindly things coming up from the bottom

and what is left behind are some nice, young shoots with nice, fat flower buds. Those will

grow into larger stems that will continue to produce flowers for a number of years.

I still have some taller shoots, although I did reduce the height quite a bit. These

taller ones will probably come out next year. I just didn't want to take it all out at once

so that the shrub still looks intact. As you can see the center is wide open, we'll have

good air circulation in there, good sun penetration and we still have a lot of flower buds left

to give us a lovely display this year.

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