How to prune Cornus & Dogwood Shrubs: foolproof guide for winter colour

Cornus is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as Dogwoods. Cornus are common in the UK and grow vigorously here, making them an almost bulletproof garden shrub for beginner gardeners.

In fact, you may have one and not even know as established Cornus lose their firey coloured stems as they turn brown and lignify over the years. Meaning their stems turn woody as the colour fades. But did you know you can hard prune them to get the fire back into your Cornus?

How to prune Cornus/dogwoods

This guide will show you how to hard prune a Dogwood (Cornus) to ensure that each winter, you have the brightest stems and a vigorous dogwood shrub. This guide can be used on nearly all types of Cornus and winter is the prime time to prune your Cornus.

1. Why do you need to prune Cornus?
2. How to know if your Cornus needs pruning?
3. When to prune Cornus shrubs?
4. Types of Cornus that respond to hard pruning
5. Tools needed to prune Cornus
6. How to prune or coppice a Cornus
7. Should I hard prune my Dogwood?
8. How often should I prune Cornus?
9. How to take hardwood cuttings from Cornus
10. What soil type does Cornus/Dogwood prefer?
11. What time of year to plant Dogwoods?

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1. Why hard prune Cornus or Dogwoods?

Hard pruning Cornus helps keep their vibrant colours and provides fresh foliage. Pruning Cornus also makes sure they don't take over your garden, as many types of Cornus shrubs are super vigorous and will easily run wild if not controlled by yearly winter pruning.

However, for new gardeners, it can feel wrong to cut back your shrubs to near ground level. Fear not, Cornus and Dogwoods are such vigorous shrubs that they respond incredibly well to a brutal hard prune every few years.

Benefits of pruning a Cornus:

• Pruning encourages vivid winter stems
• Hard pruning Dogwoods keeps their vigorous growth under control
• It prevents Cornus from becoming woody, gnarled and dull-looking
• It can allow you to propagate more Cornus from the cuttings

What happens if I don't prune a Dogwood:

• Dogwoods/Cornus have a habit of being well-behaved for 2 years and then, in year 3, growing at an insane rate so they need controlling.
• Older Dogwoods end up lignifying, and the stems become very woody and thick, making them hard to manage.
• Dogwoods sucker and send out new shoots, which then create more shrubs at each side of the shrub. Without pruning, these can become unwieldy.

2. When to prune Cornus?

Before we start whipping out the secateurs, I do need to say a bit about when to hard prune (coppice) Cornus shrubs such as Cornus sibirica or Cornus flaviramea.

• Cornus only need hard pruning when they have been established for over 3 years.
• Young Cornus should be left alone for a few years before pruning

If you have newly planted shrubs that are a year or two old, you probably don't need to coppice them just yet. This is because they are still establishing themselves, and their stems will probably be flexible and pencil-thin. So, they already have their bright colours intact!

This young Cornus alba 'Elegantissima' above doesn't need pruning - see more in the video guide above

I recommend leaving these alone until they are about 3 years old and becoming more congested and woody. Then, it's time to hard prune them each spring to enable fresh growth before winter. You can either fully 'hard' prune them back to the ground or selectively remove 1/3 of the oldest stems, depending on the size of the shrub.

If your Cornus is a tangled mess of crossing stems, then it is definitely time to prune them back into some form of order. A prune at the right time can help renovate and reinvigorate an otherwise lacklustre shrub.

See how congested the large Cornus sibirica shrub is behind me? This needs pruning.

Some guides advise that you hard prune Cornus each year, but I would advise against this mainly because it is such a stress on the plant that it can actually become very thin and sickly looking.

I coppice or prune my Cornus every other year and give them a good mulch afterwards.

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3. When to prune a Cornus or dogwood

Cornus should be pruned in March or April here in the UK. This is when their new green, fresh growth starts to emerge. This gives the shrub plenty of time to put on more growth this year and avoids harsh frosts.

The older school of thought was to do this in January, but based on experience and the RHS's revised guidance, late March is better. Firstly because you get the vivid stems a bit longer, and secondly, it's a bit less stressful for the plant as it is already in active growth.

4. Types of Cornus that respond to a hard prune

If you're wondering which Cornus respond well to a hard prune, there are four common examples that love being cut back to the ground every couple of years to provide those bright, vivid winter stems.

• C. alba ‘Sibirica’ AGM: Bright red stems in winter, red autumn leaves
• C. sericea ‘Flaviramea’ AGM: Lime green winter stems
• C. alba ‘Kesselringii’: Dark purple-black stems in winter, purple foliage year-round
• C. sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’: Yellow-orange-red winter stems

5. Tools needed to prune Dogwoods

There are a few key bits of equipment needed to prune Dogwoods effectively.

Sharp and clean tools are essential, even over expensive secateurs or the finest wood saws.

If you're on a budget, then making sure your tools are clean and sharp is enough to prevent illness or the spread of any potential plant pathogens. So if your tools look rusty and dirty, give them a quick scrub in a sink first.

1. Clean, sharp secateurs
2. Wood saw (for super thick old branches or stems)
3. Trug Bucket for cuttings
4. Compost bin to recycle your clippings

6. How to coppice prune a Cornus

You'll be pleased to know that pruning Dogwood is relatively straightforward. All you need is a sharp pair of secateurs, a set of loppers for thicker stems or a wood saw if needed. If pruning a well-kept Cornus, a pair of secateurs is usually sufficient.

The version I'm going to show you is Cornus sibirica and is in a really bad way. It's around 20 years old and has never been properly pruned, so it is a great example of a Dogwood that needs pruning back to the ground.

Step 1: Cut back all thick woody growth back to the ground.

These are the thicker, more established stems. Usually, they will only have growth near the top. So, let's cut them back to 3- 4 inches above soil level.

Step 2: Remove diseased, damaged or crossing wood

Once you've cut all this back, you should be left with the thinner, fresher growth. The next step is to remove any crossing, damaged, diseased or undesirably stems. You're aiming for an open form, so think of an open palmed hand with fingers pointing outwards as the right shape. Give your Cornus room to breathe!

Step 3: Take the remaining growth back to 2 or 3 buds

Now, we want to take back all remaining stems to 2 sets of buds. If your Cornus is relatively well kept, it should be easy to spot these buds as they will have leaves on them. In older woodier specimens, you're going to need to find the small ridges and 'nubbins' as I call them.

These are the nodes where leaves and buds will break. In older plants, these don't break as readily as there's easier growth further up.

Step 4: Cut just above the buds with sharp secateurs

Make clean, neat cuts just above these buds with sharp secateurs. If the leaves are opposite, which they mainly are, then a clean horizontal snip is the best. As long as it's clean, don't fret too much about the angle.

7. Should I hard prune my Cornus?

There's also some debate over whether or not we should hard prune Cornus and keep forcing these bright stems. I have a number of different Cornus shrubs; some I leave to do their own thing. They can grow into really nice thick hedges and will soon bulk up. Their limey yellow ribbed leaves are lovely through the summer. I believe a good hard prune helps keep them vigorous, so yes, we should prune!

This Cornus above definitely needs to be hard-pruned.

8. How often should I prune my Cornus?

I hard prune my Cornus every 3 years as a rule.

Other schools of thought take out 1/3 of the older stems to keep their height while encouraging fresh, bright growth. Others may need to renovate a Dogwood by hard pruning it back to the ground, especially if it has been untouched for years.

When hard pruning, Cornus always use heavy-duty loppers or a wood saw.

The choice is entirely up to you, depending on your specimen and preference. These shrubs are hardy and will bounce back, especially if mulched after pruning. Remember, their original root structure that fueled their growth is still there, so the pruning won't kill or harm them!

Pruning Cornus occasionally to thin our congestion is the best way to ensure a healthy, vibrant shrub. If you want that blazing winter colour, then a coppice each spring works wonders.

9. How to take hardwood cuttings from Cornus

Pruning your cornus is also a prime time to take hardwood cuttings. It's an easy way to propagate cornus to get more plants for free to bulk up your gardens. Cornus cuttings root incredibly easily from one pot, and you can end up with as many as ten new Cornus seedlings each year.

1. When pruning your Cornus, you can divide your cuttings into sections to create hardwood cuttings for new plants.
2. Take pencil-long cuttings of last year's growth.
3. Cut just below a node or where two leaves are in a horizontal line with clean, sharp secateurs.
4. Cut 6 inches above the node at a 45-degree angle (to allow water to run off)
5. Place these cuttings in a pot of compost and perlite by burying the node 2 inches into the pot - this area will form the roots.
6. Arrange your cuttings around the edge of the pot where the soil will be warmer to enable root generation.
7. Water well and place in a greenhouse or cold frame. Alternatively, add a plastic bag over the top and keep it somewhere cool indoors. This helps keep humidity up and replicates a greenhouse environment.
8. When you see roots appear at the bottom of the pot, then lift the pot on the individual cuttings into larger 2l pots until they show lots of fresh leafy growth.
9. Once growing strongly in late Spring or early Summer, you can plant them out.

10. What soil type do Cornus prefer?

Cornus are super tough, resilient deciduous shrubs. They pretty much will grow anywhere. They are excellent shrubs for heavy, wet clay soil. So, if you've got a shady garden with heavy clay, then Cornus will be a wonderful shrub for you. They will grow vigorously with very little care.

In free-draining sandy soil, Cornus will still quite happily grow but at a much slower rate and may need watering in very hot, dry summers.

11. When to plant dogwoods?

The best time to plant Cornus is in winter as bare root shrubs. This is where the Cornus is dormant.

Bareroot shrubs are cost-effective, and because the plant is effectively asleep, they need far less watering and maintenance. Once you have planted the bare root Cornus (use this bare root guide if you need help) then give it a good water and leave it alone until the spring!

If planting container Cornus in spring or summer, they will need more watering than a bare root. The good news is they root fast, so just make sure they don't fully dry out, and in a matter of weeks, your new Cornus plant will have taken root and put on new growth.

Other Pruning Guides

It's not just Cornus that benefits from maintenance or hard pruning. Other shrubs and plants need pruning, too, to get the best growth and flowering potential each gardening year. If you want to know more about how to prune different plants, then why not check out my detailed plant pruning guides below?

If you have a specific question on pruning plants, why not ask in the Garden Online Forum here?

• How to trim hedges
• How to prune a Hydrangea
• Rose Pruning Guide
• Fruit Tree Pruning
• Winter Pruning
• Pruning Herbaceous Plants
• Pruning Ornamental Grasses

Summary

Cornus add a blast of winter fire to your garden, and given they will grow pretty much anywhere, they are a great beginner gardener shrub. Even in poor soil or shady gardens, Cornus will thrive. By pruning them every couple of years, you can keep their firey glow and also take cuttings in the process. This means you can share your plants with your friends for free! So why not give Cornus a go?

If you have questions or comments on pruning Cornus, why not let me know below? You can Tweet, Facebook or Instagram me. You can also follow me on YouTube where I’ve got plenty of garden guide vlogs!

Happy Planting!

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