Winter is the ideal time for heavy pruning of shrubs in your yard. Here’s how to get the best results.

Early spring-flowering shrubs such as viburnums, lilacs and forsythia formed their flower buds last summer, so aggressive pruning on these shrubs during winter will remove branches with flower buds, resulting in no flowers this year. They will flower again in 2022, providing that they are not cut back again late this summer, fall or next winter. It is OK to nip back any stems that grow out of proportion to the rest of the stems in spring.