How to prune a lilac - tree video

Please note: This article was originally published on 4/6/2020 and was republished on 6/9/2021.

Common lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) are a favorite landscape shrub here in Ohio and beyond, with flowers that provide beauty and an unmistakable fragrance every spring.

How far can you cut back a lilac bush

Other cultivars of lilacs offer different habits and uses in the landscape, but provide the same display of flowers that we all love. In order to ensure you get the most flowers on your lilac year after year, it’s important to know when and how to prune them.

When To Prune

As a general rule for all lilacs, they should be pruned immediately after they’re done flowering in the spring.

Since lilacs set next year’s flower buds right after the current year’s flowers have faded, pruning later in the summer or fall will result in cutting off many or all of next year’s flowers. This rule of timing applies to the larger common lilacs as well as the cultivars that are shorter or more “shrub” like.

While the “when” of pruning lilacs is fairly straightforward, the “how” gets a little trickier. To keep things simple for now, we’l

when should lilac bushes be pruned

when should miss kim lilacs be pruned