Flowering will usually resume seasons onwards.

Apr 02, The best time for pruning lilac bushes is right after their flowering has ceased. This allows new shoots plenty of time to develop the next season of blooms. Pruning lilacs too late can kill young developing buds. If you are pruning lilac trees or shrubs entirely to within inches of the ground, it is best to do so in early spring. Jul 08, Many of the newer lilac varieties grow quickly and might need pruning starting in their second or third year.

In general, by the time a stem reaches more than 2 inches in diameter, it should be pruned. If you are diligent with annual pruning of your lilac, the shrub will grow to about 8 feet tall with flowers throughout the branches.

May 26, In the spring after it has bloomed, when you cut it back again, trim your lilac tree to one foot shorter than the height you want it to reach during springtime. When you prune a lilac tree, you want to give it as much of a chance to be healthy and strong. Cutting it back like this is helpful to your lilac tree.5/5(1). Lilac trees that are over three years old can safely have these removed as close to the ground as possible.

Do this from mid-June onwards. For new lilac trees in their first year, remove all the forming flower buds before they start to bloom. This is usually around the first week of stumpchopping.barted Reading Time: 6 mins.

Oct 26, There are plenty of sources of information, each one contradicting the next one. And when I searched for information about lilacs, a few sources mentioned cutting the lilac back in spring, others suggested the fall. Some said ‘cut back hard’ while others said ‘don’t cut too much’.Author: Plowing Through Life (Martha). Jun 26, Timing is the Decisive Factor in Pruning Lilacs If you want to have your blooms next year, it is crucial to prune in those first few weeks after blooming ends.

Ideally, this is when you would do maintenance pruning each year.

If you are in any way uncertain about how to maintain the beauty of your common lilac bush or hedge, you wish to enhance its flowering capabilities, or you want to renovate a lilac that has been left unpruned for some time, if is often best to call in the professionals.

But I get so lazy busy, I end Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins. Jun 06, June I gave my Korean lilac a reasonably hard prune just after flowering and it died. It did eventually send a single new shoot out from underground a couple of years later and is a good shrub again, but the hard prune killed everything above ground for several years.

Best wait until winter.