Garden Tip 180:

Sometimes in gardening, timing is everything, and now is the time for The Chelsea Chop. This type of pruning is so named because its timing coincides with the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show.

The Chelsea Chop is the practice of cutting back summer- and autumn-blooming perennials. This pruning shortens the height and prolongs the flowering period of the plants. The cut stems will produce somewhat smaller but more numerous blooms on shorter stems, a bit later than normal in the season.

Plants that can be cut back now by one-third to one-half include phlox, echinacea, asters, nepeta, helenium, and shasta daisy.  Variations of this type of pruning include pruning back some of the stems of each plant while keeping others at the regular height or pruning entire plants of a certain variety while leaving other plants alone. The Chelsea Chop, prolonging perennial performance!