Most hedge trimming companies charge $40 – $50 per hour. Very rarely will a landscape company give a flat fee with an on-site estimate for such a small project like trimming bushes. Some lawn service companies will have hedge trimming as an add-on to their lawn mowing services.

Overgrown bushes can be a major eyesore. Regular shrub care will keep them looking nice. Think of it like giving your bushes a haircut. It’s not pleasant to look at someone having a bad hair day, is it? Moreover, if you don’t trim off dead branches, they could become a safety hazard because dead branches are more likely to dislodge from the bush. During a windy storm, they could get torn off and damage your property.

Lilac should be pruned right after they are done flowering in the spring. You will want to avoid trimming them in the summer or fall. The reason is because that may ruin the flowers for next year since lilacs grow the buds for the following year after the current year’s flowers have fallen off. This applies to both big and small lilac bushes. To learn more, read our recent blog post titled When and How to Prune Lilac Bushes.

Most lilacs can grow to be about 30 feet tall without any pruning, but some smaller ones only get to half that height. Lilac bushes will reach excessively tall heights unless they get pruned on a regular basis. Therefore, the ideal amount of pruning that should be done is 5-7 inches, depending on how overgrown they are.

There are 4 different classifications of hydrangea: Annabelle, PeeGee, Oakleaf, Mophead. The best time to prune Annabelle and PeeGee is during the fall, so anytime between September and November. You can trim them down low to the ground because they will grow back with new buds on the new wood every spring. Since Oakleaf and Mophead produce buds on old wood, the best time to prune them is after their summer bloom, so from mid-June to late-July.

You can start cutting back roses once the forsythias have started blooming, which is in early spring so anytime in April. But don’t overdo it because major pruning should wait until late summer or early winter. That’s when roses will begin the dormant process. As the flowers fade, you can extend the rose blooming period by deadheading them accordingly.

You will need a pair of bypass pruning shears for pruning roses. First, remove the leaves so you can clearly see the rose bush stems. Second, clip off the dead wood. Brown is dead; green is alive. Third, remove thin growth with weak stems. Fourth, take out any branches that cross over one another. Crossing branches can rub together causing disease or damage.

The two options to choose from are handheld shears or electric hedge trimmers. The benefit of shears is that you get precision. You can give a detailed manicure to each of your bushes. The drawback is that this will take a long time if you have many hedges to cut. The downside for an electric hedge clipper is that you aren’t able to give as much attention to detail, so the hedges can look sloppy from close up. However, it will get done much sooner and nobody will be able to notice the small mistakes from far away. For more information, check out our blog The Ultimate Guide to Trimming Bushes.

If you don’t feel comfortable doing it yourself, you should hire a hedge trimming company to do it for you. You should try to get a ballpark estimate on the total cost for your trimming project. In order to get a quote, you’ll likely need to provide information about the number of bushes, how tall they are and how overgrown they’ve become. Google their company name to make sure they have good reviews online. His Workmanship offers professional hedge trimming services. Click here to get a free estimate.