Confused over pruning

Hi

I'm a complete newbie (or should that read numptie?) when it comes to gardening. Have just bought and planted a winter flowering honeysuckle. According to my gardening guide, the plant now needs to be pruned to encourage bushy growth by cutting any new growth in half.

Sounds easy, but I don't know how or where to cut (there's only three stems on the plant, each about a foot long). Can anyone tell me what landmarks I should be looking for?

Plus, if I prune it now, do I then prune again in the spring?

I am surrounded by gardening books here and not one of them has a dunces guide to pruning. :(

Please help before I massacre the poor plant. Thanks.

 

If your plant is new and just planted - and is only small I wouldn't prune it at all this year. Prune it back next year after flowering, if it does - then reduce the stems by one third prunning just above a leaf bud.

 

I PLANTED SOME LAUREL TREES RED ROBIN LAST MAY WHEN SHOULD I PRUNE THEM BACK AS I WANT THESE FOR SCREENING AT THE BACK OF MY GARDEN

 

I brought a honeysuckele cutting from greece 3 yeards ago and I have others in the garden. They are very hard to remove once they get going and increasing by layering is easy. The greek one has only 2 flowering trumpets per cluster but it has a very strong sweet smell[ white trumpets]and seems to be quite hardy. As the others say leave it this year to get established.

 

John, pruning of Laurel is done most often in April. Use secateurs rather than shears as any left cut in half will die and look bad. For screening purpose you want as bush a plant as possible from as near to the ground as possible. So you should prune back to about 9 inches above the ground if they are single stemmed plants. If they are already bushy with good stems from the base, then you should cut each stem back to about half its original length.
The Winter flowering honeysuckle is either L.fragrantissima or L. purpusii or the x between the two. I would not prune a small one like that for this year. In future do as Fran suggests. If you don't prune at all, it does not really matter the shrub just gets bigger.

 

the main thing in pruning anything, is to look it up first to find out if it has any oddities - try the RHS site. Then, whether or not you get what you want - take out dead, diseased and dying. Whatever time of year it is, that won't hurt it. Then, if it's a climber, or about to flower - leave well alone. The safest thing, for want of more info, is to trim back after flowering, to an outward facing bud. That should always be safe. But honeysuckle, vines, and wisteria "weep" if you prune them in the frowing season, so be careful. Only prune them when winter is well established!