The best time to cut back your mophead hydrangeas is in late fall or early winter before new growth begins. This allows the plant to focus its energy on producing new shoots and blooms rather than repairing damaged branches.

TRANSCRIPT

Okay, these are what's left of my Annabelle hydrangeas. These are very sad. Not my favorite variety because these are the kinds that flop over in the winter. That being said, it's hard for me to get rid of plants. So here they are, and we're going to talk about pruning them. So I, Nora, prune these in the late fall.

It's November right now. What I do for this variety is I cut them back by about a third. So that means just looking at the size of the plant, dividing it up to thirds in your head, and then cutting it back accordingly. This can be divided very easily if they get too big and out of control. This variety can also be cut back down to the ground every year if you wanted.

That's up to you. If you wanted to encourage some height, you can just cut right beneath the head. But like I said, I cut these back by a third. in the late fall. I know there's a lot of tutorials out there that might argue with me. I welcome you to argue with me in the comments. I'm ready, willing, and able.

I cut these back in the late fall every year and they're totally fine. So it's just a question of using your pruners, cutting back the stalks to where you think is appropriate. Nothing bad's going to happen. At the end of the day, they're just hydrangeas, and I think we all need to keep that in mind when we get totally obsessed and argumentative about when to prune these things.

There you go.