Q.My Gardener Cut My Hydrangeas Too Early
Hello, We had a new gardener come to they house and they cut back our hydrangeas too soon. Will they come back next year? Thank you
All things being equal, yes, they should return in spring and they should perform just as if you had done hard pruning or as if someone had mowed over them. As long as the root system is not severely injured, there should be new stem growth in spring 2024 that will provide new stem growth. However, it will take a while for them to reach their prior height/width dimensions. Spring 2024 blooming may be affected for some types of hydrangeas. You did not mention which type of hydrangeas were injured by the gardener. Smooth and panicle hydrangeas would not be impacted as they normally/currently lack any flower buds. The other types of hydrangeas do have some dormant, spring 2024 flower buds by now though. Depending on exactly how deeply the gardener cut the stems, spring 2024 blooming may be eliminated completely, may be reduced a bit or may be unaffected as stems also have back up, lower stem flower buds. That means for cultivars that bloom only on old wood, the gardener may have cut off all blooms for all of 2024 if the the cuts were deep enough or only reduced the number of blooms if some back up flower buds can produce blooms instead. For Big Leaf Hydrangeas, Mountain Hydrangeas and Bracted Hydrangeas that bloom on both old and new wood, spring 2024 blooming may have been impacted as previously mentioned but, the late summer/fall 2024 flush of blooms should occur as usual once the new spring 2024 stems achieve sufficient age/height to trigger bud set and immediate blooming to bloom by late summer/fall 2024 or earlier.
