The Ultimate ‘Chelsea Chop’ Guide For Flowers All Summer

May’s a bit of a funny month. Though it’s definitely more bountiful than austere winter, there’s a gap: wild garlic flowers, bluebells, and daffodils start to die down, while the likes of wisteria and roses are preparing their earliest blooms.

That means your garden might feel strangely low on flowers in an otherwise-bustling month. The phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the “May flower gap,” though it can extend into June, too.

But according to gardening expert Monty Don, such missed stops are avoidable. The “Chelsea chop”, the green-fingered guru explained, can help to give you a glorious garden long into the summer.

It’s a type of pruning designed as a “way of extending the flowering season of late-flowering herbaceous perennials,” Monty Don said.

BBC Gardener’s World added that it can delay their flowering period by about four to six weeks, leaving you with riotous displays all summer.

The Chelsea chop got its name because it’s best done around the time of the iconic Chelsea Flower Show, which typically runs in the third week of May.

• Heleniums,
• Sedums,
• Lysimachia,
• Solidago,
• Phlox,
• Achillea,
• Penstemons,
• Campanulas,
• Asters,
• Echinacea,
• Rudbeckias,
• Penstemons.

But, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) said, “Many other summer- and autumn-flowering perennials can be treated similarly.”

It depends on how your perennials grow.

“If you have several clumps of these plants, then cut one of them about halfway up the existing growth,” Monty Don advised.

That way, half will bloom during their natural season, while the other half will be delayed. That means your flowers will be continuously present for longer.

Another option is to cut all of the plants by about a third, which suits better if they’re growing in a single, large clump.

“The result will be that the pruned section will produce side shoots bearing extra flowers which will bloom a few weeks later than the uncut growth and extend the display,” even as late as early autumn.

The RHS stated, “The degree of cutting back is specific to each species, but the closer to flowering time you prune, the greater the delay in flowering.”

Use sharp, clean secateurs for the job, and cut at a slope just above a “node” (the point out of which a leaf grows).