How to Prune Aucuba Without Leaving Half-Cut Brown Leaves

Why shears ruin this plant

Aucuba leaves are large, thick and leathery, up to eight inches (20 cm) long. A hedge trimmer or a pair of shears passing across the surface of the shrub does not select stems; it cuts straight through whatever is in the blade's path, and most of what is in the path is leaf blade. Every leaf sliced in half is left on the plant, and the cut edge dries and browns within days.

That is not a temporary blemish. Because aucuba holds each leaf for two to three years, a shrub sheared once carries a coat of blunt-ended, brown-rimmed half-leaves for the next two seasons. The plant is perfectly healthy underneath and looks dreadful. It is the single most common reason a well-grown aucuba looks bad, and it is entirely self-inflicted.

The alternative takes longer but not much longer. Work with pruners or loppers, reach into the shrub, and cut each stem you want to shorten back to a leaf joint or a side shoot, so that every cut end is hidden inside the canopy and every leaf that remains is a whole leaf. On a plant the size of a person this is a twenty-minute job once a year. The result is a shrub that looks untouched rather than trimmed, which is what you want from an informal evergreen anyway.

If the aucuba is part of a formal clipped hedge and shearing is unavoidable, accept that you are choosing outline over leaf quality, and shear early in the season so the worst of the browning is grown over by autumn. Better still, go over a sheared hedge afterwards with pruners and remove the most obviously butchered leaves.

When to cut, and how much

Spring, as growth is starting but before the new shoots extend, is the time for everything. The plant has the whole warm season ahead of it to cover the cuts, and you can see the winter's damage clearly enough to remove it in the same pass. A light tidy in early summer, straight after the main flush, is acceptable if a stem has grown across a path. Do not cut in autumn: fresh wounds go into cold weather with no growing season behind them, and you lose the berries.

Aucuba takes hard pruning as well as almost any evergreen. Cut a stem back into bare old wood and it breaks from dormant buds along the length of it, usually within six to eight weeks in spring. This means a neglected overgrown plant, or a scorched plant you have just moved into shade, can be rebuilt from the base rather than replaced. Expect a bare period of about two months and full cover by the end of the season.

1. Take out dead, damaged and crossing stems first Before shaping anything, remove whole stems that are dead, broken or rubbing against a neighbor, cutting them out at the base or at a healthy junction. Half the time this alone opens the plant up enough and no further cutting is needed.
2. Cut every stem back to a leaf joint or side shoot Follow each overlong stem back inside the canopy and cut just above a leaf joint or a branching point, roughly a quarter inch (5 mm) above it. The remaining foliage then hides the cut. Never leave a bare stub sticking out beyond the leaves.
3. Vary the depth of the cuts Cut different stems back to different depths rather than all to the same plane. This is what makes the difference between a shrub that looks naturally full and one that looks like it has been cut to a shape, and it is impossible to achieve with shears.
4. Never cut across a leaf blade If the blade is going to pass through a leaf rather than a stem, reposition and cut somewhere else. A cut leaf browns along the cut and stays on the plant for two years. There is no exception to this rule on aucuba.
5. Thin the center of a congested plant On an old dense shrub, remove one or two of the oldest stems entirely at ground level. Light and air reaching the middle keep the inner leaves alive and are the best defense against scale, which colonises exactly the shaded inner stems nobody looks at.
6. Renovate hard if the plant is bare-legged Cut all stems back to twelve to twenty-four inches (30 to 60 cm) in spring, staggering the heights over about a foot (30 cm) so the regrowth is layered rather than flat. Mulch, keep the soil damp but not wet while it is leafless, and expect full cover in one season.

Renovating in stages, and pruning around the berries

If a bare period in a prominent position is unacceptable, rebuild the plant over three years instead of one. Cut a third of the stems hard back each spring, taking the oldest and worst first. The shrub keeps its leaves throughout and never looks cut down, and by the third year it is entirely renewed. The trade-off is that the untouched stems continue to stretch while you wait.

On a female plant the berries complicate the timing slightly. Berries color in autumn and hold on the plant right through winter, often still there when spring pruning comes round. That is not a reason to delay: the old berries are on their way out anyway and the plant flowers on new growth that will have the whole season to develop. What you must not do is prune in autumn, which takes off the berries just as they are coloring, or in late winter if you are enjoying them, which simply means waiting a few more weeks for spring.

Pruning does not affect the male-female situation at all. A male will not start berrying however you cut it, and a female with no pollinator will not either. If berries are the goal and pruning is the suspect, the cause is almost always pollination and not the pruners.

Note the date of each hard cut and how many new shoots came from each stump. After two plants you will know exactly what height to cut at in your own garden to get the shape you want, which no general guidance can tell you.