[AlaninCarlisle]

For a variety of personal reasons, my large garden has got out of control. The main areas are shrubberies where they haven't been trimmed or pruned in a couple of years. As well as a lot of roses, there are a multitude of other shrubs, too numerous to list but including hydrangeas, laurel, holly, rhododendrum etc
I'd like to take advantage of the present dry sunny weather by cutting them back. I realise that for most shrubs early spring is the conventional pruning time but am I likely to cause damage if I go at them now?

[New shoot]

It shouldn’t cause damage as such, but there are a couple of things to be wary of.

It may trigger new growth and that would not have time to fully harden off before winter set in, so you may get some frost damage on that. It’s not the end of the world and you could prune it away in spring once the worst of the weather is past.

For anything that flowers before mid summer, you will probably prune away the growth that would flower next spring.  It would mean missing 1 year of flowers, but again, not the end of the world if a radical taming session of over grown shrubs is more important.

[AlaninCarlisle]

Thanks, that's the rest of this week taken care of

[Growster...]

It's my job for the weekend, as we've been told that the council will do just one collection of garden rubbish this week, after a layoff of a few months...

I've got to tackle five weigelas, two euonymous, several fuscias, a rampant Albertine, a mock orange (haven't a clue how to do this one, it's ten ft tall, but flowered beautifully this year), forcythia and a few roses which have gone adrift!

I think I'll need about five bins for Monday's collection, but they've said they'll only do one, and 'don't over-fill it'..:0~