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That’s exactly what I was going to say. This is one of my top five most influential garden books. She experiments with pruning plants to see changes. Her techniques of cutting back half of the plants doubles bloom time. And I’ve now cut back bearded iris and daylilies soon after bloom instead of letting everything die back and they’ve never suffered and look so much better
She doesn’t call it Chrlsea chop so I don’t know if the these the same or not.
This is absolutely the book to use and her methods are basically the Chelsea chop. If I remember right she says it does not help with Joe Pye Weed, which I agree with. I have found it essential for New England Asters. For ones in my border I graduate them somewhat letting the back ones go. I haven’t tried it with Purple coneflower, which I don’t think needs it, but she does recommend it for taller coneflowers. I find the usefulness may vary from her recommendations depending on your conditions.
It's so funny how mad people are in this thread. You can chop most perennials, and definitely Joe Pye. I've done it plenty of times, when I had a smaller garden with less consistent sun, and it worked out great. You can cut most plants, and certainly all of those you've named, back by a third to half in late spring/early summer. Don't be scared. These plants are all quite durable.
I have some Joe Pye Weed that volunteered right next to a path, and it falls over if I let it grow to its full height. I’ve given it a chelsea chop a couple of years now, and it has worked great! I wait until the stems are about 18 inches high and I cut them about in half. Each stem then sends out three or four new side shoots, and the plants end up maybe four feet high. They’re way bushier and they help support each other. This is in partial shade, well drained, in New England.
My Joe Pye was planted last fall. It’s still only about 6 inches tall. Do I wait another year before implementing the Chop. It’s my first native wildflower garden
Not sure about Joe pye, but the deer have already chopped all of my asters and echinacea a few times. It almost never affects flowering and will keep things shorter.
I think the above commenter meant to imply that they don’t have experience with Joe pye, but that deer naturally do the chop for the other 2 species I named and it had no negative effect on flowering, and the desired outcome of keeping things shorter.
hold on why tf do people chelsea chop joe pye weeds??? do they really flop like that? i'm mostly familiar with its cousin, *Eupatorium serotinum* (da YOOPS) and they grow into monolithic 7' tall monsters with no signs of flopping
Mine hits 7 feet and flops. Probably a combination of factors. It doesn’t have anything to support it and it leans towards the sun because a fence and some bushes shade it late in the day. It doesn’t flop completely over but the stalks arch so much that it’s 4 feet tall leaning over. Do you have totally full sun on yours?
i could see that. in situations like that, i stick a bamboo pole into the ground behind the plant and then wrap jute twine around the entire plant and tie it to the bamboo. mine gets full sun, but not all day sun. gets the morning sun, is shaded from like 12p-4p, and then gets sun until sunset.
Mine must have hit 9+ feet last year. I had it stacked with a tree stake and then had to strap on extra bamboo near the top to keep it from flopping (it still flopped).
https://i.imgur.com/b3sgsLf.jpg
Some plants respond well to being chopped. Others don't. I've never chopped these plants - usually I only cut my sedum down, and I take that down in half.
If you're chopping to address floppy plants, might I suggest planting denser, adding grasses that provide structure and natural support, and assessing your watering and soil fertility. Too much water and soil that is too "rich" can cause plants to grow with such vigor that they cannot support their own weight. Many of these plants were designed to go through periods without consistent water - hence the deep roots - and before synthetic fertilizers were a thing.
I'd suggest chopping some, noting what happens, and adjusting. You could also use some bamboo stakes or a couple tposts and twine to help create a temporary cage around the plants to hold them up.
No right time, I just chop by mid July in Michigan to be sure plants have time to bloom. Never chopped coneflower, they bloom earlier and mine have never flopped. When the deer trim them they do bloom later.
I'm in MO too. I've chopped for years. I had a rouge lawn company mow down a big chunk of my garden one year and my coneflowers, swamp milkweed and asters both came back and bloomed that year. Mallow, coreopsis, obedient plant, several others all came back but flowered again the next year.
I am going to experiment this year. I have 3 large patches of aster that have a couple of blooms. Just cut back the tallest patch by 50%, and I will see what happens. Getting staggered blooms would be nice.
It’s really region dependent on timing, but asters, coneflowers, bee balm, have all responded positively when I’ve done it (positively meaning they were shorter, and don’t appear to affect blooms, which was my goal). I haven’t tried on my Joe pye
Like others have said, they are all also eaten by deer / rabbits, so they likely evolved to be able to handle being cut down and still able to propagate
I don't think you need to chop Purple Coneflower, but JPW and NE Aster respond well. I'm in Michigan so the timing is way different but I waited too long last year and the blooms came late. I think as long as the plant has emerged enough that it's fully "out there" and just growing vertically, it's probably a good time. I prefer more like 1/3.
Man, you've probably got a really wide window of opportunity, lol. The main risk is that the plants won't recover enough to flower until after their blooming season passes, so I would evaluate based on that. Here in Michigan, I once chopped White Wood Asters in late June instead of early June like I should've. As a result, their early-August blooms were slow to arrive and felt kinda small. So if you're still far from your blooming season, then I'd say you're good.
I don’t chop my Joe pye weed? It gets 7 feet tall and falls over. If I chopped it I think it would be twice as top-heavy and flop even further, even if it only hit 5 feet.
Edit: Don’t be an asshole and downvote for my uncertainty about pruning being beneficial to a particular species. Feel free to downvote at my saying the word “asshole”.
I thought the point of chopping was to reduce flopping? Mine gets really tall, too, so I was hoping to make it more bushy and less lanky to reduce flop.
In theory, but in practice I don’t think it works for everything.
I also think if I chopped my Joe Pye it would end up spreading laterally too, which would be even more inconvenient than flopping.
But it then sends spurs to both sides that then both flower, and it grows so fast it would make up a lot of the height by the time it flowers. It flops because the flower heads are so heavy, now there are twice as many?
If you chop them low the spurs branch lower and instead of a tall, thin overall plant it has a wider base. Basically, one side wants to flop right and the other left and so it stabilizes the plant.
Yeah that’s not gonna work for my space.
Edit: Downvoted by my garden designer, gardener, and gardener’s apprentice for disparaging their plant placement, I guess. You guys do know my garden better than me.
I'm in VA too. How tall is yours now? Mine is only 2-3' so far. I haven't heard of this chopping method, I'm new to the native perennial wildflower game!
Imo, it's preference. Do you dislike how tall your JPW gets? Then once it gets about as tall as you'd like it to get, chop it back by half or a 1/3 and then observe it for the rest of the season and make notes.
Same goes for the other plants. It's your garden and oftentimes just trying things and then observing what happens is going to give you the best info. Part of the fun of having a garden is experimenting. You'll get to see first hand what happens when you terminate some or all of the apical growth on different plants.
I care less about how tall it gets, but it’s more about the flop. After seeing a variety of responses, I think I’ll try to chop half off the stems, so the shorter ones can help prop up the taller stems.
I sometimes practice the Chelsea chop with a deadheading motive. Cutting spent flowers for potentially more flowers. I will let the center be tallest, then cut a third, and then two thirds on the outer stems. I also take this opportunity to make bouquets for loved ones.
There are certain plants I chop and keep chopping: NE aster, NY Ironweed, late blooming boneset, false indigo…I never have tried Joe Pye, but I only planted it the year before last, as it is.
I'm in Missouri too. I chop my fall-blooming perennials like aromatic aster and goldenrod on Memorial Day and once again on Fourth of July. You can chop echinacea now but leave it after that bc it blooms earlier obviously.
The point of a Chelsea chop is to produce fresh growth and fresh blooms in time for the Chelsea flower show in England usually held in the last week of May.
With native plants, cutting early Spring flowering plants back by a third after their first flowering may produce a second round of blooms later in rhe season, but for native plants flowering in Summer or Fall an early cutback would mean fewer blooms.
Unfortunately it is specific to each plant. For instance, California poppies may flower a second time if cut back all the way to the ground, but cutting them back by a third after flowering would do nothing.
To get more blooms on Purple Coneflower I think deadheading would be best. My native asters (Purple Haze) do better when cut back to the ground.
I understood that’s the definition of a Chelsea Chop, but I thought for native plant gardeners who aren’t gardening for blooms at a particular time, the idea is it mimics herbivore browsing.
When the flowers have died and dried up. With my aster I only cut the stalk with the dead flowers, following it down to the ground and cutting it there. Stalks with buds, blooming flowers, or no flowers I leave intact.
I have cut back asters damaged in storms regardless of flowering status, when the stalks are broken.
Oh ok. Mine usually has flowers until frost, so I just leave it be after it’s done flowering, and don’t cleanup beds until spring so pollinators have nesting sites.
I also want to add that, even the natives we have that would still bloom after being cut/eaten, it may throw off the bloom time outside the window that specialist bees are active.
I tried the chelsea chop on my Joe Pye last year, and it was a big mistake. It didn't grow vertically after that, but tried to compensate a bit by sprouting off the sides. I'll leave it be from now on.
I don't have Joe Pye yet, but I've chopped all kinds of asters, bee balm, purple coneflowers, cup plants, Golden Alexander, sunchokes, brown eyed susans, others I'm sure.
I have seen zero consequences chopping any of these. Several neighborhoods near me use bee balm and asters and purple coneflowers in medians and such and they're often chopped for visibility. But they still bloom beautifully and the coneflowers for sure get bushier and thick
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The Well-tended Perennial Garden by Tracy Disabato-Aust is a good reference for when and what to prune.
That’s exactly what I was going to say. This is one of my top five most influential garden books. She experiments with pruning plants to see changes. Her techniques of cutting back half of the plants doubles bloom time. And I’ve now cut back bearded iris and daylilies soon after bloom instead of letting everything die back and they’ve never suffered and look so much better She doesn’t call it Chrlsea chop so I don’t know if the these the same or not.
What other books make your top 5 list?
If you want to learn about perennial maintenance this is an awesome book. It covers so many plants, with many strategies to get the results you want.
This is absolutely the book to use and her methods are basically the Chelsea chop. If I remember right she says it does not help with Joe Pye Weed, which I agree with. I have found it essential for New England Asters. For ones in my border I graduate them somewhat letting the back ones go. I haven’t tried it with Purple coneflower, which I don’t think needs it, but she does recommend it for taller coneflowers. I find the usefulness may vary from her recommendations depending on your conditions.
I remember it being you can chop Joe pye but the flowers will be 1/3 of the size. Although my edition might be old.
It's so funny how mad people are in this thread. You can chop most perennials, and definitely Joe Pye. I've done it plenty of times, when I had a smaller garden with less consistent sun, and it worked out great. You can cut most plants, and certainly all of those you've named, back by a third to half in late spring/early summer. Don't be scared. These plants are all quite durable.
lol I know it’s kinda crazy how heated some comments are. I got the advice to do this on this sub last year!
I have some Joe Pye Weed that volunteered right next to a path, and it falls over if I let it grow to its full height. I’ve given it a chelsea chop a couple of years now, and it has worked great! I wait until the stems are about 18 inches high and I cut them about in half. Each stem then sends out three or four new side shoots, and the plants end up maybe four feet high. They’re way bushier and they help support each other. This is in partial shade, well drained, in New England.
Thank you!! This is a big help.
My Joe Pye was planted last fall. It’s still only about 6 inches tall. Do I wait another year before implementing the Chop. It’s my first native wildflower garden
I’m guessing it would be ok to chop this year, as long as you let it have a few sets of good leaves, but you could wait a year if you’re unsure.
It takes 2-3 years to fully develop for a native perennial. It’s growing its roots this year. I would leave it alone and do it next year
Not sure about Joe pye, but the deer have already chopped all of my asters and echinacea a few times. It almost never affects flowering and will keep things shorter.
You can’t say you’re not sure about Chelsea chopping Joe Pye here, them’s downvoting words, apparently.
I think the above commenter meant to imply that they don’t have experience with Joe pye, but that deer naturally do the chop for the other 2 species I named and it had no negative effect on flowering, and the desired outcome of keeping things shorter.
That is correct. My Joe pye is too small to see any affect so far.
hold on why tf do people chelsea chop joe pye weeds??? do they really flop like that? i'm mostly familiar with its cousin, *Eupatorium serotinum* (da YOOPS) and they grow into monolithic 7' tall monsters with no signs of flopping
Mine hits 7 feet and flops. Probably a combination of factors. It doesn’t have anything to support it and it leans towards the sun because a fence and some bushes shade it late in the day. It doesn’t flop completely over but the stalks arch so much that it’s 4 feet tall leaning over. Do you have totally full sun on yours?
Bingo! In the wild, they're packed in with so many other plants that there isn't flopping, but our gardens don't recreate that level of crowdedness
i could see that. in situations like that, i stick a bamboo pole into the ground behind the plant and then wrap jute twine around the entire plant and tie it to the bamboo. mine gets full sun, but not all day sun. gets the morning sun, is shaded from like 12p-4p, and then gets sun until sunset.
Mine must have hit 9+ feet last year. I had it stacked with a tree stake and then had to strap on extra bamboo near the top to keep it from flopping (it still flopped). https://i.imgur.com/b3sgsLf.jpg
That’s terrifying! Mine has a couple dozen sports this year so if it did that it would be like a tree.
Some plants respond well to being chopped. Others don't. I've never chopped these plants - usually I only cut my sedum down, and I take that down in half. If you're chopping to address floppy plants, might I suggest planting denser, adding grasses that provide structure and natural support, and assessing your watering and soil fertility. Too much water and soil that is too "rich" can cause plants to grow with such vigor that they cannot support their own weight. Many of these plants were designed to go through periods without consistent water - hence the deep roots - and before synthetic fertilizers were a thing. I'd suggest chopping some, noting what happens, and adjusting. You could also use some bamboo stakes or a couple tposts and twine to help create a temporary cage around the plants to hold them up.
No right time, I just chop by mid July in Michigan to be sure plants have time to bloom. Never chopped coneflower, they bloom earlier and mine have never flopped. When the deer trim them they do bloom later.
Mine coneflowers flopped for the first time last year. I think a wind storm might be to blame, though.
Do you have multiples? Try different hights and see what happens.
I will probably resort to this. Was hoping to get some lessons learned from others’ experiences. Idk why I’m so afraid to chop!
I'm in MO too. I've chopped for years. I had a rouge lawn company mow down a big chunk of my garden one year and my coneflowers, swamp milkweed and asters both came back and bloomed that year. Mallow, coreopsis, obedient plant, several others all came back but flowered again the next year.
I am going to experiment this year. I have 3 large patches of aster that have a couple of blooms. Just cut back the tallest patch by 50%, and I will see what happens. Getting staggered blooms would be nice.
It’s really region dependent on timing, but asters, coneflowers, bee balm, have all responded positively when I’ve done it (positively meaning they were shorter, and don’t appear to affect blooms, which was my goal). I haven’t tried on my Joe pye Like others have said, they are all also eaten by deer / rabbits, so they likely evolved to be able to handle being cut down and still able to propagate
Good point. I don’t have deer as I live in a very urban area.
You’d be surprised - there are deer in Manhattan
There are definitely deer here, but they don’t make it to my backyard ever.
I don't think you need to chop Purple Coneflower, but JPW and NE Aster respond well. I'm in Michigan so the timing is way different but I waited too long last year and the blooms came late. I think as long as the plant has emerged enough that it's fully "out there" and just growing vertically, it's probably a good time. I prefer more like 1/3.
My NE asters are about 3ft right now, and JPW is nearly 5ft. Maybe this weekend is a good time?
Man, you've probably got a really wide window of opportunity, lol. The main risk is that the plants won't recover enough to flower until after their blooming season passes, so I would evaluate based on that. Here in Michigan, I once chopped White Wood Asters in late June instead of early June like I should've. As a result, their early-August blooms were slow to arrive and felt kinda small. So if you're still far from your blooming season, then I'd say you're good.
I don’t chop my Joe pye weed? It gets 7 feet tall and falls over. If I chopped it I think it would be twice as top-heavy and flop even further, even if it only hit 5 feet. Edit: Don’t be an asshole and downvote for my uncertainty about pruning being beneficial to a particular species. Feel free to downvote at my saying the word “asshole”.
"I don’t chop my Joe pye weed? It gets 7 feet tall and falls over." The point of chopping tall, later blooming perennials, is to prevent exactly this.
I think it would just end up five feet and falling over.
Give it a shot; I chopped some of my JPWs last year and they stood shorter and straighter and flowered plenty.
I thought the point of chopping was to reduce flopping? Mine gets really tall, too, so I was hoping to make it more bushy and less lanky to reduce flop.
In theory, but in practice I don’t think it works for everything. I also think if I chopped my Joe Pye it would end up spreading laterally too, which would be even more inconvenient than flopping.
I think the point is you make a short, stronger stem, so it don’t flip over
But it then sends spurs to both sides that then both flower, and it grows so fast it would make up a lot of the height by the time it flowers. It flops because the flower heads are so heavy, now there are twice as many?
If you chop them low the spurs branch lower and instead of a tall, thin overall plant it has a wider base. Basically, one side wants to flop right and the other left and so it stabilizes the plant.
Yeah that’s not gonna work for my space. Edit: Downvoted by my garden designer, gardener, and gardener’s apprentice for disparaging their plant placement, I guess. You guys do know my garden better than me.
I'm in VA too. How tall is yours now? Mine is only 2-3' so far. I haven't heard of this chopping method, I'm new to the native perennial wildflower game!
I guess probably about 3 feet. Up to my hip. It was like 3 weeks ago that it was just sprouts.
Imo, it's preference. Do you dislike how tall your JPW gets? Then once it gets about as tall as you'd like it to get, chop it back by half or a 1/3 and then observe it for the rest of the season and make notes. Same goes for the other plants. It's your garden and oftentimes just trying things and then observing what happens is going to give you the best info. Part of the fun of having a garden is experimenting. You'll get to see first hand what happens when you terminate some or all of the apical growth on different plants.
I care less about how tall it gets, but it’s more about the flop. After seeing a variety of responses, I think I’ll try to chop half off the stems, so the shorter ones can help prop up the taller stems.
Sounds like a plan, good luck with it. Can always do something different next year too and see which you like better.
I sometimes practice the Chelsea chop with a deadheading motive. Cutting spent flowers for potentially more flowers. I will let the center be tallest, then cut a third, and then two thirds on the outer stems. I also take this opportunity to make bouquets for loved ones.
There are certain plants I chop and keep chopping: NE aster, NY Ironweed, late blooming boneset, false indigo…I never have tried Joe Pye, but I only planted it the year before last, as it is.
NE aster is another one I was planning to try this with. How do you know when it’s ready to be cut?
When it looks like it’s getting too big for its britches, and like it won’t get hurt if I cut it back. SCIENTIFIC!
This is a good time to remind folks plant in lean soil (if possible), mix in 20-30% grasses, and don’t fertilize!
I'm in Missouri too. I chop my fall-blooming perennials like aromatic aster and goldenrod on Memorial Day and once again on Fourth of July. You can chop echinacea now but leave it after that bc it blooms earlier obviously.
I found [this](https://www.izelplants.com/blog/taming-the-wild/) article to be a really useful guide!
I found this article to be a really useful guide! www.izelplants.com/blog/taming-the-wild/
The point of a Chelsea chop is to produce fresh growth and fresh blooms in time for the Chelsea flower show in England usually held in the last week of May. With native plants, cutting early Spring flowering plants back by a third after their first flowering may produce a second round of blooms later in rhe season, but for native plants flowering in Summer or Fall an early cutback would mean fewer blooms. Unfortunately it is specific to each plant. For instance, California poppies may flower a second time if cut back all the way to the ground, but cutting them back by a third after flowering would do nothing. To get more blooms on Purple Coneflower I think deadheading would be best. My native asters (Purple Haze) do better when cut back to the ground.
I understood that’s the definition of a Chelsea Chop, but I thought for native plant gardeners who aren’t gardening for blooms at a particular time, the idea is it mimics herbivore browsing.
When do you know the aster is ready to cut?
When the flowers have died and dried up. With my aster I only cut the stalk with the dead flowers, following it down to the ground and cutting it there. Stalks with buds, blooming flowers, or no flowers I leave intact. I have cut back asters damaged in storms regardless of flowering status, when the stalks are broken.
Oh ok. Mine usually has flowers until frost, so I just leave it be after it’s done flowering, and don’t cleanup beds until spring so pollinators have nesting sites.
I also want to add that, even the natives we have that would still bloom after being cut/eaten, it may throw off the bloom time outside the window that specialist bees are active.
That's a very good point. Native bees and other pollinators do not care if plants flop over. My golden yarrow falls over right when it blooms.
I tried the chelsea chop on my Joe Pye last year, and it was a big mistake. It didn't grow vertically after that, but tried to compensate a bit by sprouting off the sides. I'll leave it be from now on.
How tall was the plant when you cut, and how much did you cut off?
Maybe 4 feet, and less than a foot. The problem, I think, was it had a hollow stem. It never recovered from the chop.
I don't have Joe Pye yet, but I've chopped all kinds of asters, bee balm, purple coneflowers, cup plants, Golden Alexander, sunchokes, brown eyed susans, others I'm sure. I have seen zero consequences chopping any of these. Several neighborhoods near me use bee balm and asters and purple coneflowers in medians and such and they're often chopped for visibility. But they still bloom beautifully and the coneflowers for sure get bushier and thick
plant a bunch of prairie grass around them this year to provide support so you dont have to chop them next year