Pinching Plants: The Secret to More Blooms

Atzinger Team
Jun 13
3 min read

Pinching or tipping: Maintaining a beautiful, thriving garden year-round is a year-round task. It often requires a great deal of foresight, not just taking care of what is growing in the garden at the moment but knowing what and how plants will grow in the future and preparing for it. One important way you can care for some of your perennials is by pinching, or tipping, them, which is something Atzinger Gardens gardeners are starting to do now.

*Tipping is a simple process, but it can make a big difference to the long-term appearance of your garden*

Many more blooms: The practice of pinching perennials is to remove the very ends of the flowering stems, or, in some cases, to cut the stems down to 6-8 inches. In Michigan, this is done in late May or June. This encourages the plant to back bud and grow more branching stems to the sides, rather than growing straight up. This prevents the plant from growing long and leggy and prevents drooping branches from being weighed down by heavy flowers. The result is a more shapely and denser plant and many more blooms. The technique can also be used to delay flowering, to create situations where bursting flowers are all booming concurrently, when 100 friends and family are over for a graduation party, that would otherwise be impossible.

*The buds below the cut are encouraged to grow out more, leading to more horizontal growth*

Cutting off live growth: Tipping is relatively simple to perform, consisting of using a pair of gardening secateurs (fancy British way to say pruners) or even the fingers to take off the apical bud of a plant, or the bud that grows at the end of a stem. This encourages the plant to spread out two new stems on either side as opposed to growing outward. Long, outwardly growing branches can grow too heavy with blossoms and droop over, as well as allowing the plant to grow shaggy in appearance. Meanwhile, a pinched plant will grow rounder and with more dense clusters of flowers. The practice of pinching might on the surface seem similar to deadheading, but unlike deadheading, pinching a plant is cutting off live growth instead of dead flowers. Although it can seem antithetical to encouraging the growth of new blossoms, some plants are highly tolerant of tipping, and can be tipped three or four times in a season to beautiful results.

*The plant is cut below the apical bud, encouraging growth lower down*

Fuller plant and more flowers: If perennials have already flushed out and are leggy, it is encouraged to cut back the perennial harder, to 6 or 8 inches. As long as the perennial has broad leaves and is not grass-like, buds will still be present along the stem and will flush out, creating a fuller plant and more flowers. This is done especially with perennials such as nepeta (Catmint) and salvia, which will rebloom more reliably from this tipping technique.

*Neil Atzinger tipping multiple plants at once*

Beautiful, late-season growth: Tipping is an incredibly simple procedure that can be performed on many plants to benefit aesthetic appeal - catmint, mums, and dahlias, salvia, phlox, echinacea, upright sedums, achillea, and most other broadleaf perennials (dicots). Do not perform this technique for grass-like plants (monocots such as daylilies, kniphofia, liatris, irises) as they do not have buds along the stem and only grow from basal growth. Tipping encourages beautiful, late-season growth into fall with these broadleaf plants. As they need time to regrow better than ever, tipping is generally performed in late spring to early summer so that they are ready to blossom forth in the autumn. All in all, keeping a beautiful garden year-round requires forethought, planning, and careful maintenance. Tipping can be a big part of keeping a beautiful perennial garden into the late fall. If you are interested in this service, or a maintenance plan, give Atzinger Gardens a call at (734) 272-7321!

Scroll down to see tipping in action!