How and When to Cut Back Peonies for Healthier Plants

Find out exactly when to cut back peonies and how to do it properly to benefit next year’s blooms.

Herbaceous peonies (Paeonia lactiflora) are among the easiest flowering plants to grow. One key to success is knowing when to cut back peonies and how to properly make your cuts. These perennials produce new growth from the plant’s crown in spring, which dies back to the ground after a frost. While you can leave many plants’ dead foliage in place over the winter, herbaceous peonies benefit most from an autumn haircut. This guide explains why and how to cut back peonies at the right time for healthier plants and more flowers.

Related: 12 Perennials to Cut Back in Fall

Why You Should Cut Back Peonies

Peonies have a crown and storage roots below the soil level, and they send out new buds yearly. They do best with good drainage and plenty of air circulation, which helps reduce disease issues. Keeping them cleaned up is aesthetically pleasing, but it also reduces disease and insect issues for the following year.

Peony leaf blotch (Cladosporium paeoniae) and powdery mildew are fungal diseases that affect peonies and can overwinter in the dead foliage and stems on the ground. By cutting back peonies and disposing of the foliage, gardeners remove the existing fungi and their food. Cleaning up the area improves air circulation and reduces dampness, which is often found under dead foliage and stems near the crown.

When to Cut Back Peonies

Peonies are an exception to the rule about leaving garden cleanup until spring. While some garden detritus helps to harbor beneficial insects over the winter, leaving dead peony foliage invites plant diseases.

Peonies flower in late spring, but the plants have more to do. A peony spends a lot of energy flowering and needs to replenish its stored energy to prepare for the next year. All summer and into fall, the peony’s green foliage gathers sunlight and performs photosynthesis, creating carbohydrates to store in its roots. Cutting the plant back too early affects next year’s growth.

The best time to cut back peonies is to wait for the first frost in autumn. When the leaves have turned color and you are digging out sweaters and thinking about pumpkin spice, it’s time to grab the shears.

Related: The 12 Best Pruning Shears of 2024 to Keep Your Garden in Check

How to Cut Back Peonies

Cutting back herbaceous peonies is easy and doesn’t require much finesse. You need a sharp, clean pair of pruners or shears. That’s it.

Tips

If you have more than one peony to cut back, keep a bucket of 10% bleach solution handy and disinfect your pruning tools between plants. Dip the blades into the solution and leave them for about a minute before continuing on to the next plant.

To cut back peonies, follow these steps:

1. Wait for the foliage to be finished for the year. It turns a lovely shade of orange or deep red, so it blends in nicely with other autumn colors.
2. After the first frost, snip off the stems cleanly, just above the crown, where they emerge from the soil.
3. Collect and dispose of the stems and leaves. Don’t compost them because pathogens can survive and reinfect plants when you use the finished compost in your garden.
4. Add some straw or pine needle mulch in cold climates to help protect the crowns from extreme temperatures, but remove it in spring before new growth appears.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do all peonies need to be cut back?

All herbaceous peonies benefit from being cut back in autumn. Tree peonies should not be cut back to the ground yearly but can be pruned for health and shape after blooming is finished.

What happens if I forget to cut back my peonies?

Nothing catastrophic. Some gardeners never cut peonies back. While cleaning them up helps limit pathogens, you might get away with it if you don’t have problems with peony diseases in your locale. If you missed it in the fall, it’s still good to cut away the old growth in spring to make way for the new buds.

My peonies have powdery mildew. Should I cut them back now?

While powdery mildew isn’t pretty, it won’t kill the peony. If the plant is heavily infested to the point that no green is left, you can cut some of the worst foliage and dispose of it to limit future spore spread. However, it’s usually best to leave the foliage to harvest whatever sunlight it can for next year.

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