Gadenin日本語Get the appNever use shears on a bay
This is the single thing that separates a good clipped bay from a disappointing one. Bay leaves are two to four inches (5 to 10 cm) long and leathery. Hedge shears or a trimmer cut straight across them, and every severed leaf browns along the cut edge within days. Because the cut surface of a clipped ball is entirely made of outer leaves, the whole plant turns a scorched brown for a month or more until new growth covers it.
The answer is pruners and individual cuts. It is slower, and on a large ball it takes an hour rather than five minutes, but the plant looks finished the same day and stays looking finished. Cut each shoot back to just above a leaf that faces the direction you want the new growth to go, and remove any whole leaf that would otherwise be left sticking out beyond the line.
If you have already used shears and the plant is covered in browned half-leaves, do not panic and do not cut again. Pick off the worst of the damaged leaves by hand over the following week and let the next flush cover the rest. It will look normal again within two months in the growing season.
The one exception is a large bay hedge of many yards, where hand-cutting is genuinely impractical. Accept some browning there, and time the cut for early summer so the next flush covers it quickly.
When to cut
Timing is what decides how long the cut shows. Bay puts out its main flush of growth in late spring and often a second, smaller one in late summer. Cutting just before a flush means new leaves cover the work within weeks; cutting after growth has stopped means the plant stands there showing every cut all winter.
For a formal shape, clip in early summer once the spring flush has hardened, and give a second light tidy in late summer if the shape has broken up. Both cuts are followed by enough growing weather to hide them. Avoid cutting after early autumn: the soft new growth it stimulates will not harden before the first frosts and will blacken.
Hard renovation is a different job with different timing. Cutting old wood back severely is done in spring as growth begins, so the plant has the whole season to respond.
| Job | Best time | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Main shaping clip | Early summer, after the spring flush hardens | New growth covers the cuts within weeks |
| Light tidy | Late summer | Catches shoots that broke the outline; still time to harden |
| Removing frost-damaged shoots | Mid to late spring | Wait until you can see which wood is alive |
| Hard renovation of an old plant | Early spring as growth starts | A full season to reshoot |
| Any cutting | Not after early autumn | Soft late growth blackens in the first frosts |
| Removing suckers from a standard | Whenever they appear | They steal vigor from the head |
Clipping a ball
A ball is made by repeatedly cutting the outermost shoots slightly shorter than the shape you want, so the plant thickens inside the line rather than reaching past it. It takes two or three seasons from a bushy young plant, and the mistake beginners make is trying to reach the finished size in one cut.
- Walk round and find the line Stand back several paces and decide where the surface of the ball sits. The eye finds an uneven outline far better from a distance than from arm's length, so step back repeatedly while you work.
- Cut every proud shoot back inside the line Take each shoot that sticks out and cut it about half an inch (1 cm) inside the intended surface, just above an outward-facing leaf. The new shoot from that bud will fill the line exactly.
- Remove whole leaves that cross the line Rather than cutting a leaf in half, pinch it off at its stalk. This is the step that makes the difference between a clean shape and a brown one.
- Thin the interior lightly Take out a few crossing or dead inner shoots so light and air reach the middle. A ball that is a solid impenetrable shell gets scale and sooty mold inside it.
- Turn the pot a quarter after clipping Turning a potted plant regularly keeps growth even; a ball that always faces the same way flattens on the shaded side within two seasons.
Training and maintaining a standard
A standard is a clear straight stem with a clipped head on top. To train one from a young plant, choose the strongest upright shoot, tie it to a cane, and remove all side shoots from the lower part of the stem as they appear, while leaving the leaves on the stem itself for the first two years because they feed the trunk's thickening. Once the stem reaches the height you want, pinch out its tip and let the head branch.
Maintaining an existing standard is mostly a matter of discipline about two things. Rub off every sucker from the base and every side shoot on the clear stem as soon as you see them, while they are soft enough to remove with a thumb. And clip the head slightly harder on the underside than the top, because the head naturally grows wider than tall and starts to look heavy.
Check the tie on any staked standard twice a year. A tie that was comfortable two seasons ago will be cutting into a thickening stem, and a ring of constricted bark on a bay does not grow out.
Do not remove the leaves growing directly on the trunk of a young standard in its first two seasons, however untidy they look. They are what thickens the stem enough to hold the head up without a cane later.
Recording your cuts
Note the date of each clip and how the plant looked three or four weeks later. Two seasons of this tells you exactly when your own flush arrives, which is the whole secret to cutting so the damage never shows. If the plant was still brown at the edges a month after a cut, you cut too late; if it had grown past the line within three weeks, you can cut slightly harder next time.
Also record when you last renovated an old plant and how much you took off, since bay responds slowly and it is easy to lose track of whether a leggy specimen was cut back one year ago or four.