Cutting Witch Hazel: Season & Instructions

The witch hazel enchants your garden with its sea of ​​flowers. But how do you cut the brightly blossoming witch hazel correctly and what should you watch out for?

The witch hazel (Witch hazel) with its delicate flowers fills the home garden with the first splashes of color and scents from December to March. But the noble winter bloomer grows very slowly and does not sprout again from old wood. You should therefore cut back as rarely and if only a little. The plants develop beautiful, funnel-shaped, upright, loosely branched crowns even without help. A cut can even lead to the loss of this typical growth. Therefore, it is best to only use scissors if a branch is to be used as a vase from time to time or if you want to keep your plant small. However, some things can go wrong. So that your witch hazel does not suffer unnecessarily, we have put together everything you need for a successful cut.

Witch hazel: when to prune?

If you want to trim your witch hazel a bit, we recommend spring after flowering. It is best to trim your witch hazel regularly and only moderately. This is tolerated much better than a strong pruning.

These products are ideal for cutting your shrubs, hedges and trees:

• Felco secateurs: Manual pruning, pruning and pruning shears recommended for all types of cutting. In addition to plastic-coated handles, it has a precision adjustment system for the blade and anvil blade.
• Felco fruit tree and secateurs: Robust fruit tree and secateurs with wire cutter, sap groove and micrometer adjustment.
• Gardena telescopic arm scissors: Practical secateurs for effortless cutting of tall trees and dense shrubs from the ground.

Cutting witch hazel: how to do it

When pruning your witch hazel, it is important to restrain yourself. After a radical pruning, the plant is very likely to wither. The bloom will also fail to appear in the following years or be very sparse. If the plant is weakened too much by pruning, it will even die. This is incredibly annoying with the expensive and slow-growing noble shrubs. It is therefore better to cut your plant very carefully into the desired shape. It is best to lightly thin out the shrub after flowering. You can't go wrong with removing old, dry branches either. That will thank you the delicate witch hazel too. Just make sure that you only use very sharp and clean tools for cutting because of the poor wound healing. But even with the right tool, larger cuts should be avoided. Therefore, only young shoots are pruned when pruning, because the more mature and thick the branches, the more problematic the pruning is for the plant. The resulting wounds are best closed with a little wax.

Note: A good alternative to pruning is to plant small, permanent varieties such as 'Arnold Promise' or 'Diane'.

You can find more information on planting witch hazel and the different varieties in our special article on Witch hazel.