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I have what I think is a magnolia bush in my back yard. I am not a gardener. The bushes, two or three of them in a row, are about 8 feet high and about 8 feet in diameter with amazingly fragrant white flowers, with complicated petals. The bush has beautiful shiny green leaves.
Today only, we have in our driveway a Chapel Hill $20 huge yard waste dumpster for the purpose of cleaning up leftover piles of leaves and branches that have fallen over the winter.
As I am cleaning up the yard I realize that it is a mess under these bushes, but the branches grow so low to the ground that I cannot even see under there to tell you how many bushes there actually are.
I would love to be able to cut off the very lowest of these branches so that there is about one foot of clearance between the ground and the first sweeps of folliage. I don't have any of that stuff that you put on trunks to seal the plant or tree, and there's no way I can leave to get any today.
Question: Would doing such a pruning at this time of year, in flower, without sealing, harm these plants?
That sounds like Magnolia grandiflora or Southern Magnolia. Pruning to remove branches can be done at any time. Pruning a flowering plant when you want flowering next season is best done after flowering so the plant has ample time to set new buds. You want the branches gone, so go for it. I recommend making two cuts per each branch. One about a foot away from the trunk to remove the weight of the branch and avoid the bark peeling back into the trunk, and then a second to clean up the nub just outside of the branch collar (raised area where the branch meets the trunk). Pruning sealer is not needed, and can actually be detremental to the wound healing process.
Are you sure it's a magnolia? It sounds like it could be a gardenia to me! Magnolia's are here are usually trees, gardenias are usually bushes. But both have white fragrant flowers and glossy green leaves.
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