Cutting back oleander in Mallorca

Prune oleander after the main flowering, usually late summer into autumn, and shape it lightly again in late winter. It tolerates hard pruning better than almost anything else in a Mallorcan garden, so an overgrown plant can be brought back over two seasons rather than replaced.

Timing

Oleander flowers on the current season’s growth, so cutting in late winter costs you nothing and produces a stronger flush. The post-flowering cut is about size and shape. Avoid pruning in the coldest weeks, since fresh cuts on soft growth take frost damage in the inland valleys.

Bringing back an overgrown plant

Take out a third of the oldest stems at the base, then repeat the following year. That renews the plant from the bottom while keeping something to look at in the meantime. Cutting the whole thing to knee height works too and it will come back, but you lose two seasons of flowering and gain a thicket of shoots that needs thinning anyway.

The safety part

Every part of an oleander is toxic, sap included. Wear gloves and long sleeves, keep the sap off your face, and wash tools afterwards. Do not burn the prunings, because the smoke carries the toxins, and do not put them where animals might browse them. Bagged green waste to a collection point is the straightforward answer.

Where it belongs

Oleander is one of the toughest plants on this island: it takes heat, drought, salt wind and poor soil, which is why it lines so many roads. In a garden it earns its place as screening and summer colour. Think twice about planting it right where small children play, and keep it back from a pool where the flowers would drop into the water.

Where the prunings can go is covered in garden waste disposal on Mallorca, and the rest of the pruning year in the planting calendar. If a hedge of it has got away from you, send the job through.