Elizabeth is a Permaculture Garden Designer, Sustainability Consultant and Professional Writer, working as an advocate for positive change. She graduated from the University of St. Andrews with an MA in English and Philosophy and obtained a Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design from the Permaculture Association.
Reviewed By COLIN SKELLY
Colin is a Horticulturist and Horticultural Consultant with experience in a range of practical and managerial roles across heritage, commercial and public horticulture. He holds the Royal Horticultural Society’s Master of Horticulture award and has a particular interest in horticultural ecology and naturalistic planting for habitat and climate resilience.
Contributions From EMILY CUPIT
Emily is a Gardening Writer, Photographer and Videographer from Derbyshire, UK. She is the Founder of Emily's Green Diary - a community of more than 75,000 people who share in her gardening journey.
IN THIS GUIDE
Rosemary is an incredibly useful plant to grow in your garden and is also a great companion plant for wildlife attraction and pest control.
It is also, of course, a popular culinary herb, and you can also use it in a wide range of other ways in your home.
When placed in the right location, rosemary can be an excellent low-maintenance plant and will generally take up very little of your time.
Pruning is one element of plant care to think about when growing this evergreen herb, but even this job is not hugely complicated or time-consuming.
When pruning rosemary, here are the basic things to keep in mind:
- Pruning rosemary is not essential, but pruning is useful for keeping rosemary plants healthy, abundant, bushy and looking their best.
- Rosemary is best pruned in late spring or summer (often after flowering), and should not be pruned later in the year.
- Pruning can often simply be harvesting when it comes to a rosemary plant, so you do not necessarily have to think of these as separate jobs.
- Precisely when and how you will prune depends on what you want to achieve. We’ll cover pruning for different purposes below.
| Difficulty | Easy |
| Equipment Required | Secateurs |
| When To Prune | March-July |
Do You Need To Prune Rosemary?
Rosemary does not necessarily have to be pruned at all.
However, there are a number of reasons why pruning can be beneficial when growing rosemary in your garden.
Pruning rosemary will:
- Allow you to remove any dead, damaged or diseased material after winter.
- Encourage a bushy and compact habit.
- Keep the size of the plant in check.
- Allow you to shape the plant if used in hedging or topiary.
- Rejuvenate an overgrown or mature rosemary shrub.
Pruning Over Winter
Rosemary is H4 hardy, which means it is hardy through most of the UK.
However, during a harsh winter, especially if you live in the north or a colder region, tips on a rosemary bush may sometimes blacken and experience some frost damage.
Here in Fife, Scotland, my rosemary occasionally experiences a little damage after a severe winter, though this has not stopped the plant from growing into quite a large and bushy shrub.
In the spring, I will check over the plant, and where there are areas of damage, I will simply prune these off.
The damage is never extensive, so this just involves giving the plant a light trim.
Pruning After Flowering
The rosemary I have on the sunny fringes of my forest garden does not flower, which is probably because the conditions are fertile there and rosemary flowers best in poor and very free-draining soil.
However, since I am most interested in growing rosemary as an aromatic herb for culinary and other household uses, I don’t mind this.
Where rosemary does flower well, the plant is typically pruned lightly for maintenance immediately after flowering.
Rosemary flowers in late spring or early summer, so whether flowers actually form on your plant or not, this is the best time to give the plants a trim.
Generally speaking, less is more when it comes to pruning rosemary.
Maintenance pruning generally just involves removing tip growth and unsightly branches here or there as required to maintain a bushy habit and a pleasing shape.
I don’t really prune my rosemary as such, but regular harvesting basically amounts to the same thing, since I regularly remove small sprigs for cooking and larger stems for drying.
I will generally harvest or prune from the top 15-20cm of the mature plant.
Reducing The Size
If you would like to reduce the size of a rosemary shrub and keep it in check, you can give it a trim all over, but you should take care not to reduce branches too much in length and ensure that you do not cut right back any woody material.
Flowers will form on the current or previous year’s growth and pruning too much can reduce or even eliminate flowering the following year.
Shaping For Hedging
If you are growing rosemary for hedging or topiary, then you may trim it to keep its shape in spring, then again in early summer for a neater and more orderly growth habit and form.
Think about the shape that you would like to achieve, then simply lightly trim to achieve the form you desire.
Take care not to prune any later in summer or in autumn, because this can encourage tender new growth that is less likely to make it through the winter months unscathed.
Rejuvenating A Mature Shrub
Mature rosemary shrubs that have become leggy and woody might respond to harder pruning, though you will lose any flowering that there may have been, and should still not remove more than a quarter of the plants.
Pruning back by around a quarter in spring may rejuvenate your shrub.
However, generally speaking, it is best to take cuttings or layer the rosemary shrub and replace one that has become overgrowth and woody altogether.
“I find that hard pruning can rejuvenate a straggly Rosemary, but will have its limits,” shares Colin Skelly, a Master Horticulturist.
“If you need to prune hard, take cuttings from the cut material. If it fails to respond or becomes straggly again, which is likely after a year or two, then you will have replacements ready.”
