Pruning A Pyracantha Bush (Video)

How to Reduce the Size of a Pyracantha Bush

Sometimes a hedge can get a little out of hand if it's not trimmed back ofter enough. Here in the video below, it shows you how to trim back a Pyracantha and how to re-train it against the fence.

You will need a good pair of secateurs, leather gloves, pruning saw or loppers and some garden string or wire.

TRANSCRIPT

We want to try and renovate this old Pyracantha hedge. What we want to do is push it back, so it's up against the fence and we can start pruning it to form a thick mass up against the fence and not this far out. So what you’ll need is a pair of good secateurs, a little pruning saw or loppers if you have them and some good leather gloves because Pyracantha is covered in thorns.

Sometimes it’s easier just to have one glove so you can hold it and just try and chop it out. Then you can see where you are. There are three to four big thick stems. There's some smaller stems, which you might be able to get rid of these thicker stems, keep the thinner stems, and then you can kind of prune them and place them up against the fence.

Keep that, I'll be able to bend that over that way.

So we've got a bit of air in there, getting rid of some of the older wood. Try to keep some of this fresher growth, once you’ve got this down, it might be worth trimming it by half and then take some of these shoots back by half.

If you want to put it tight up against the fence, try and get rid of all of the shoots that go up against the fence. So you'll be able to get it in a bit tighter. Like that.

Then probably measure the top of the fence. If you’ve got a branch that’s a bit thicker, get yourself a little pruning saw.

It looks as though we’ve butchered it, which we have. You should be able to start thinking about tying these back into the fence now. We've finally got it all pruned back. We've tied it in as best as we can for the time being. Get rid of any branches that you’ve missed, leave it like this for the spring, and hopefully it should start shooting again. And it should be coming out like this. Once you’ve got a good new shoot like that, prune it back by half and it should bush out from here.

Then keep it trimmed back as much as you possibly can, close to the fence. Once you've got it into the shape you want it, you can kind of go over with a hedge trimmer and just give it a light trim out from the fence.

Just keep these tied in, keep these pruned, and hopefully you should get a lot more new growth next year. But just by doing that, an hour's job, you've gained three to four foot of border.