You may have taken cuttings after the last leaves fell from your favourite flowering bushes back in the autumn, but if you missed that opportunity you have a second chance just before they burst back into life in spring.
Late February to early March is the prime time to do this, although mid to late-March may work just as well if you live north of the Midlands.
This combines well with spring pruning summer-flowering shrubs such as buddlejas and fuchsias, unless you actually need to cut back spring-flowering shrubs because they are too big.
The purple-flowering buddleja bush might grow like weeds round your way, but you won’t be disappointed with a yellow pom pom buddleja (Buddleja globosa), or a white-flowering buddleja, just to make a change.
Buddleja White Profusion, for example, may lift a dark corner of your garden and will attract butterflies and pollinating insects just as well as the purple varieties.
Other summer-flowering shrubs that need pruning now include hydrangeas, Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternate), Californian lilacs (Ceanothus burkwoodii), Rose of Sharon or St John’s Wort (Hypericum) and Lavatera.
You can also propagate fruit bushes such as blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries now using the same method.
Hardwood cuttings are taken from stems that are more than a year old and no longer green and bendy – hence the name.
They need to be about as long and as thin as a pencil, with a slanting cut at the top, just above a bud, and straight cut at the bottom just below a bud.
These two types of cut are partly so you can tell which is the top and bottom, and partly so that rain will run off the top cut and not settle leaving the cutting prone to diseases.
If there are any leaves on the cuttings, strip the lower ones
Fill a few large plastic flower pots, like the ones roses come in, with potting compost – adding a handful of sand to make it slightly gritty.
This gritty texture means that when you push the cuttings into the compost they will be slightly grazed and this is where the plant’s enzymes will assemble to try to heal the plant with new cells that will become roots.
Alternatively, you can cut a half moon of bark from the bottom of the cutting to encourage the same reaction, and if you are the boots and braces type you can dip the cuttings in rooting hormone powder.
Push the cuttings half to two-thirds of their length into the compost – or soil if you choose to grow your cuttings in an unused corner of the garden – then water them and put the pots in a cold frame for protection from frosts.
Don’t forget to keep them watered over the summer, too, and by autumn it should be obvious which have taken.
You can either transplant them in autumn into your garden, or put them in their own pot and grow them on until you need them.