Named after the timing of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the Chelsea Chop is a popular gardening technique to help your herbaceous perennials produce stronger and bushier plants, and to keep them blooming for longer. In this video, Debi Holland explains which plants you can ‘chop’ and shows you the two ways you can do it.
How to do the Chelsea Chop
Read the transcript
Have you heard of the Chelsea Chop and wondered how to do it? It’s a pruning method usually carried out in late May or early June, around the time of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
Choose the right plants. It works well on clump-forming perennials with several stems, such as nepeta, echinacea, heleniums, many salvias and asters. Leave foxgloves, aquilegias, peonies and irises to flower as usual.
Encourage bushier growth. Pruning now turns a tall perennial into a bushier plant that needs less staking. The flowers tend to be smaller, but you should get more of them. Removing the top shoots encourages the stems to send out two or three flowering side shoots.
Delay or stagger flowering. There are two ways to do it. You can cut the whole clump back by a third to a half to delay flowering until later in summer. I like to think of the plant as a stadium with tiered seating. I cut the front stems back by about a third and leave the back half. The back flowers first, then the front takes over as those blooms fade. That gives you a longer flowering season.
It might seem drastic to cut your perennials back now, but your garden will reap the benefits later in summer with plenty more blooms.
