Hi Scotkat I always prune my heathers immediately after flowering. You must prune down to where this years flowering started. It may look as if you are cutting off too much but it will soon grow new healthy flowering stems. It is important that there is still green below the cut. There is a very clear series of how to photographs on the following web site. http://www.scribd.com/doc/11936667/North-American-Heather-Society-Heather-Pruning

Thankyou for link SG

Excellent advice from Scotsgran.

I used to grow 10000 winter flowering heathers a year on my nursery.

Never,ever cut trim below where there is green growth. It will not regrow.

Thankyou to Anchorman will rember both your helpful knowledge.

Leave mine till spring, because it gives them some degree of protection, and the spent flowers do not look unattractive during the winter...never really been a fan of seeing anything that's been pruned in autumn looking that way throughout the winter.

Councils and gardens with large plantings of heathers have been known to use a strimmer to prune them. They look rough and scruffy after trimming but as soon as they start to grow again they are fine.

Thankyou Bluespruce and Bulbaholic

I've never used a strimmer but a hedgetrimmer used carefully works fine

Here's one of my customers gardens with heathers which get hedgetrimmed immediately after flowering each year

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31559373@N00/3380217786/

Here are some other heathers showing what they look like immediately after pruning. I could trim them a bit harder than this but it is best to trim them a week or two before they finish flowering and before new seasons growth occurs( or you trim that growth off) so I leave a small amount of flower on so they still have some colur.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31559373@N00/3559939285/

Thankyou again Anchorman but I can't access your photos it says its private.

That's very odd Scotkat. All my photos have 100% public access

Try this and see if it works.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31559373@N00/

Thankyou Alan got in this time I have added some nice comment still not found the heathers will keep looking.

Please join my garden forum its still a small community building up your knowlege most welcom.

forums.trowelslg.com

Kath

I use my battery hedge trimmer too. I did use secateurs at first but saw the Beechgrove gardeners using hedging shears. which made the job much easier. The electric(battery) shears does the job in no time at all. I use a fine tined rake to pull off the clippings and put them in the compost heap. The new growth can vary in colour from pale cream/white through to a dark blue/green which gives a new interest between flowerings.

If the heathers have been neglected a good way of saving them is to trim as advised, dig them up and plant them deeper to cover all the brown leggy bits. They will root on those stems spreading the plant around. I had forgotten I did this. See my photos on 3rd line of Page 7. Nos 23 and 24.

Yes that is good advice Scotsgran. When I was a full time nurseryman I would often by hundreds of leggy heathers at auction at knock down prices (quite often 5p each just after flowering when nobody else wanted them )

When I got back to the nursery I would chop off the bottom half or third of the root system and give the top half of the plant a hard haircut. This would allow me to plant the plant very low in a bigger pot and within a month I'd have a lovely new non leggy plant which I'd grow on until they flowered in winter and sell back to the auction at £1 each.