SEATTLE — From Ciscoe:
The best time to prune your Rhododendron is within a couple of weeks after flowering is finished. Soon afterwards new growth will emerge, and by early summer flower buds will form at the end of newly grown branches. If you wait too long, pruning can interfere with the budding process and reduce the number of blossoms you'll get to enjoy next spring. You can't harm a Rhododendron by pruning it. The plants are covered with barely noticeable buds that will break to become new branches where-ever you cut, even if you prune the entire plant back to 6 inches from the ground. Just remember that the farther down you cut, the more potential flowers you remove, and it can take awhile before new ones will take their place. Hence if you cut it back drastically to preserve a view, it might not flower again until it grows right back to the height where it blocks the view again. It could it be time to replace that honker with a smaller growing variety, but there is another solution.
If your Rhododendron is getting huge, don't feel bad. The problem is that many Rhododendrons are actually trees and may reach 20 feet or more. Before we know it, the plant totally blocks the view out the window. As mentioned, most folks solve the problem by cutting their rhododendron down close to the ground. This works because rhodies have special buds and will branch out practically anywhere you cut them. The problem is that after such a hard pruning, it can take 2 or 3 years before a rhody will begin blooming again, and by then, the plant's inevitably grown back to block the view once more. Rather than whacking your rhody down every few years, consider removing the twigs and foliage from the lower portion blocking the view, while allowing the canopy to grow up and remain above the window. Many rhodes have attractive exfoliating bark and interesting branching patterns. Within a year or two, you'll be able to look out through the magnificent trunks while enjoying a canopy filled with blooming flowers above the window.
Segment Producer Suzie Wiley. Watch New Day Northwest at 11 a.m. weekdays on KING 5 and streaming live on KING5.com. Contact New Day.