Are Your Lilacs Blossoms Looking “Rusty’? Time to Prune By Joyce D’Agostino

Photo Joyce D'Agostino

For those who love lilacs, having those wonderful blooms and fragrance is a welcome end of the long winter. Lilacs now come in various shades of purple, lavender, pink and white. 

But now that the season for lilac blooming is over, you may notice that those lovely flower heads are replaced with unsightly rusty colored heads. This is normal for your lilac and not an indication of a decline in the shrub or a disease. However now that the blooms are done and before the lilac prepares for next season, you have a window of time now in June to do some removal of those old flowers as well as some pruning.  

Prune lilacs soon after they bloom by Vicky Spelman

Courtesy Pixabay

The fragrance of lilacs is one of the most wonderful of springtime flowering shrubs. Lilacs are versatile flowering shrubs and can have a wide range of uses in the home garden from border plants, and windscreens to flowering hedges.