large sunflowers will have much smaller heads and look very weird if you do this...you might like it though.
Generally, the most pleasing shape (and easiest to obtain) is the naturally occuring one....and using plants placed properly to take advantage of their form, is an art.
Seasonal bloomers like early season sedums, you'll cut off blooms, you also run that risk with some of the black eyed susans.
I personally only consider this an option for very leggy tall plants (asters and certain late blooming perennial sunflowers come to mind)...though even there, siting them in a large bed or in the back row would prevent the natural form from being a problem. You can of course get more flowers on asters by inducing bushier plants, though individual flowers will be smaller than on plants with natural form.

If you like to clip things, it's your garden..but just saying, you're better off finding plants that have a pleasing natural form to your eye than trying to torture plants into unnatural forms. There's enough varieties that there's undoubtedly something for everyone.

I must say I agree with dbarron completely, however if you must- pinching as opposed to cutting is the way to go (for some plants). In zone 5 plants that are cut back often do not have time to bloom well or at all as you discovered.
There is a book that you may be interested in called The Well-Tended Perennial Garden (planting & pruning techniques) by Tracy DiSabato-Aust.
I wish the deer would stop cutting some of mine back. lol!

Yes, I hate inadvertent pruning (mine by accident, dogs, deer, etc), that results in losing that bloom stalk you've waited ALL year for :)

Basically, annuals are usually safe to pinch...they HAVE to produce seed or perish...so usually will flower a bit later and bushier.

With perennials, it's not quite the same....and only experience and heartache will teach you which in your garden.

Certain perennials and shrubs benefit from being cut back early in the growing season. In my own garden beds, balloon flower and blue mist shrub come to mind. Balloon flower (Platycodon) gets too tall (altho' not leggy) and tends to flop. It gets whacked in early June to control height. Blue mist shrub (Caryopteris) gets pruned early in the season to encourage more blooms to attract pollinators.

I've never cut back Sedum, Cosmos or Black-eyed Susan, nor have I been tempted to cut back other perennials just to control height or encourage more blooms. In general most things do what they're supposed to do without much help from me. Hardy hibiscus grows tall but I let it. Daylily blooms only last a single day and don't require my intervention. Stoke's aster/Stokesia blooms prolifically but doesn't seem to need any help from me. Black snakeroot (Cimicifuga racemosa) does get rather tall and the bloom stalks have an arching form but nothing that looks out of place or obstructs my path.

My gardening objectives are to plant it, enjoy it, neglect it. Other than rare exceptions, I've achieved that goal.

Suggestions? Check out 'Perennials for Every Purpose' by Larry Hodgson for growing tips.
Cautions? None
Successes? Balloon flowers & blue mist shrub
Failures? None

Here's another thread on this topic.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chelsea Chop

There are numerous plants on which I impose my will but I never thought Balloon flower would take a trim. How well does it perform?

Forsythia is my best effort. The shrub in the picture is over 50 years old. I chop it to 12" soon after it finishes bloom. Every year it produces new slender branches and shows glorious sprays of flowers in the spring.

Yes, what you see is the growth of one year.

Forsythia and colored twig dogwoods are famous for being candidates for a yearly haircut.
I prefer woody backbones of the garden, like oakleaf hydrangeas, witch hazels, etc, that require only shaping or removal of old flower clusters.

You may have hit a sensitive nerve here for me. I hope you don't encourage the trimming of Forsythia into a ball or squared off as a hedge. The bloom is shabby and if you want just a shape then there are far better plants for that effect.

I am not sure how you would shape a color-twig dogwood.If it is similar to the mal-practice of shaping Forsythia, then you have raised my ire on that one too.

Personally, I believe that trimming/chopping of shrubs and bushes should be done only to improve the bloom or to control size.

Sorry if I sound aggressive here but as I said, it is a sensitive nerve for me as a gardener.

I chop back shrubs to maintain size. Sometimes I take out up to 1/4 of the plant's oldest growth right at the base.

Oh, I agree totally with the previous poster, just gave some examples of relatively common mispractices :)

Coloured stemmed dogwoods being grown just for the stem colour do produce a better show if cut to the ground in whole or part periodically. Forsythia needs no regular pruning but can be tidied up and rejuvenated by judicious removal of stems. Shearing ruins it. If it is to be pruned it needs to be done immediately after it flowers. This is because it blooms on old wood and needs time to produce it if it is to flower the following year.

Emorgork, I like that forsythia better than any I have ever seen. I have always been content to enjoy them taking up space in someone else's yard because I thought of them as a boring space eating bushes all year except when blooming in late winter when we are desperate for color. You've found a way to create an appealingly airy and 'see through' plant making it look desirable to me.

Thats how I treat my Russian Sage, another shrubby plant that does better trimmed low to the ground except I do it before it puts out new growth in late winter.

In May, I am so tempted to stop around the neighborhood to encourage home owners to chop down their massive hills of sparsely blooming Forsythia. They give the plant a bad reputation as a garden hog and for so little effort, can be so attractive.

My mother had the idea to match the bloom with the Orange Emperor Tulip.

You have a beautiful looking forsythia. Some neighbors have them but we don't have room for one.

I'm wondering how flowering quince would do trimmed like that? Its much more attractive as a shrub out of bloom than forsythia but still, it would be interesting to experiment. From what I observe, they are the earliest blooming shrubs here in Oklahoma often coming out in late February or at least by mid March.

I pinch almost all my blooming perennials with nodal growth at least once. It makes them sturdier and increases bloom profusion. Some, like hardy hibiscus, I'll pinch 2 or 3 times before I let them bloom.

Al

Emerogork2 - Balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflora) responds very well to an early June shearing here in Zone 6a. I just whack all mine down to about 14 inches in early June each season to control height. The shearing tends to encourage heavier bloom so it kills two birds with one stone. My numerous winter sown balloon flowers produce hundreds of flowers each season. I have blue, white and pink varieties planted in various garden beds.

N.B. - When cut back, the stems ooze a milky sap but in my experience over the years, that does the plants no harm.

"You have a beautiful looking forsythia. Some neighbors have them but we don't have room for one."

Really, this one does not take all that much room. Left on their own long enough, they will take up a 15' diameter circle and look really trashy. One chop to 12" once a year is all it takes to keep this one from being a real estate hog.

Being a 50 year old root base really helps in making for long annual shoot production.

"Some, like hardy hibiscus, I'll pinch 2 or 3 times before I let them bloom. "

Are you pinching or cutting stems?

Next year I plan to cut back the outer circle of my Hibiscus for short outer ring of stems and let the center ones grow tall.

I might even thin out some of the roots in the spring.

My horticultural focus is bonsai, so I borrow a lot of manipulative techniques for use on most other plant material I tend. The effect of pinching and cutting back stems yields the same result - activation of latent axillary buds proximal to the pinch or truncating cut. Asking if one pinches or cuts stems is sort of like asking whether one uses gift wrap or wrapping paper.

In most cases, when I'm undertaking a pruning operation to produce a sturdier plant with more blooms, I'm truncating the stem several nodes proximal to apices. If you differentiate between the terms according to where the stem is cut instead of the intended effect of the cut (I don't), in most cases it would probably be called pruning. When I prune 4 or 5 of the most distal nodes from every stem in a clump of plants, I still refer to it as pinching because of the effect I'm after.

For instance. I might wait until a clump of hardy hibiscus has 6-8 nodes before I prune all the plants back to 2-3 nodes. This yields usually 4-6 new stems. When those stems grow to 6-8 nodes, they all get pruned back to 2-3 nodes as well, which gives me as many as 10 or more secondary stems growing off of each main stem, where normally there would be 1 had I not pinched. The plant blooms a couple of weeks later than unpinched plants would, but they are much stouter and produce many times the number of blooms.

Al

I removed my message.

This post was edited by Emerogork2 on Sat, Dec 6, 14 at 23:09

Interesting, I guess it is all a matter of semantics.

I see pinching as a more delicate operation than pruning. I pinch back tomato plants by removing the small armpit sprouts to prevent growth of fruit at the bottom of the plant. I prune a plum tree to shape it or remove diseased/dead growth.

I wonder what a landscaper would say if I mentioned that I want my over sized Maple tree to be pinched back. (:

Hmm, if I was pinching most of my perennials I'd never have time for anything else and there's no way I'm out there counting nodes. Mostly, I trim the plants needing it in late winter and I can tell ya, there's no way I'd pinch those subshrubs types like bush salvias, rosemary, lavender or other woody perennials not to mention all those grasses when the late winter grass cutting back marathon begins. I use grass shears on all these and the faster the method, the better.

I agree, I think of pinching as something delicate and Japanese-like you do with your fingers on the tender growing tips, like mums if you want to control them unnaturally into those perfect mounds of solid bloom color (which I don't). Trimming is a different matter.

I do cut the Azure Sage back 1/2 in mid summer to keep the height down and clip back stuff like Lantanas, Salvia greggii, Missouri primrose, Santolina, Fringed Sage etc after the blooms peter out in late summer or to encourage foliage growth rather than letting the energy go to seeds at the expense of ratty foliage but most of the plants I grow look better left natural.

Its often a matter of taste and types of plants/gardens as opposed to correct vs incorrect.

Basically, I don't like a clipped artificial look in either shrubs or perennials. I grow many plants that naturally grow in dense mounds, most of which never need trimming at all. Then there's the sharp stickery stuff like cactus, agave, hesperaloes and the like and I just trim out any dead stuff there.

There is one thing that drives me crazy. Seeing ornamental grasses trimmed back into flat top haircut disasters for neatness. That looks like crap along with some shrubs that it should be against the law to shear.

"I pinch back tomato plants by removing the small armpit sprouts to prevent growth of fruit at the bottom of the plant."

If we're to be technical, that operation would be pruning, not pinching. A good argument could be mounted that once you make any cut, no matter how delicate it might seem, proximal to the first node proximal to an apical meristem (removing the apical meristem and the first node immediately behind it), you're pruning, but 90% of what growers refer to as pinching removes more than the apical meristem and first node proximal to that. So how far back can you pinch before it's pruning?

It's sort of like you calling an axillary sprout on a tomato plant an armpit sprout - I know what you mean, so why correct the misnomer?

Happy Holidays. I'll be moving along.

Al

As I see it::

Pinching is a procedure best used to address the removal of new tender growth... i.e. bud removal or newly emerging vegetation that has not hardened off.

Pruning is a procedure preformed with a mechanical device to remove hardened or lignified growth. Pruning is not a gentle technique as is pinching. Pruning is used for branch removal, defoliation, etc.

Of course, some branches are soft enough that they can be pinched while some new growth may be too hard to remove gently and you need a tool.

I agree wit Em, it is all a matter of semantics but I do think I will ask the tree surgeon to pinch back the Dogwood tree. (:

In a Pinch, a chainsaw will do.

After thinking about this topic more, I realize that what I cut back varies from one year to the next. In a dry year there is little need to trim back and it wouldn't be a good idea to encourage the plant to put on growth before summer heat really sets in since that tender growth would wilt in the sun and the plant is better off going into a dormancy period. On the other hand, last year we had a very wet June and a rare wet July. I had some usually well behaved plants that became leggy and much taller than normal, some were even flopping, so I trimmed many of them to clean up the look more so than trying to encourage blooms or discourage seeds.

wantanamara I do hope you aim that chainsaw just above where its proximal to the first node proximal to an apical meristem.

I like to have all the annuals yarded out and perennials cut back before the snow arrives, otherwise the deer are inclined to graze the dead tops and be digging down and exposing the crowns of some plants.

What are we referring to here? I thought it was about cutting back, pinching or pruning in late spring and summer for blooms and form etc rather than the clean-up you do before, during or after winter dormant period? I'm confused now. I was talking about trimming during the growing period just to clarify.

"What are we referring to here? I thought it was about cutting back, pinching or pruning in late spring and summer for blooms and form etc rather than the clean-up you do before, during or after winter dormant period?"

You are correct in that I was thinking about next year spring/summer treatment of plants.

However, not ever having any problem with deer, I never realized that they will dig down for more of the plant as they dine and then disturb the crown. It totally makes sense though....

Seems like a good time to bring this thread up again. Have you started pinching anything back yet this year?

I like dbarron's approach in the first comment, but my gardens are young and in many places the plants that would support the leaners aren't hefty enough yet. I've got a bunch of Salvia azurea in the back of a bed that I'm hoping eventually I can let lean without pruning over the stiffer plants in front of them. Same for Heliopsis helianthoides.

One plant I definitely won't pinch again is Asclepias tuberosa. I got the impression that the aphids made a beeline for it afterwards. Fortunately this year it's filled in a bit and not leaning so badly (yet).

My 50 year old Forsythia was cut back to about 18" a week ago and is already filling in to grow long strands for next year. I just cut back Bee Balm and plan to tackle the Sedum tomorrow. Unfortunately, Sedum cuttings will be screaming to be rooted and potted. Cosmos are (is?) still too short.

I trim my quince just as it starts to bloom. Flowers grow on last years old growth so I trim off anything that hides flowers.

If you are not familiar with Siberian Wallflower (Orange), you need to get some. Grows easily from seed. Very durable and manageable. I am going to experiment this year, Cut one back to see if it thickens although it certainly doesn't need it. Later in the year I will cut back all the spent flowers and others will be deadheaded. Blooms from now to September with little care.

I do some pruning to plants that I have (through ignorance) planted too close to my path way. An Ageratina havanense to be exact. . TEX, if you are reading this. , The cool long spring is making this plant form flower buds 5 months early !!!! Maybe I will get two blooms out of this plant this year. Maybe it is cool weather that makes this plants set buds. We have been in the 70's and 60s for over a week till today (90) but tomorrow back to the 70's for a stretch.

What about Nepeta? Anyone cut it back at some point during the summer? If so, when and how far?

I cut back my Nepita Walkers Low after its bloom to make it have a fall bloom.

I've cut back 'Walkers Low' but didn't get any more blooms, it just looked nice and tidy. But I think I waited too long to do it, so this year I will try and do it immediately after blooming and see if I get some more flowers.

How far do you cut it back? How many inches above ground? Thanks!

I cut mine back to 3-4" or so

Thanks, greenhearted!