Do You Remove Lilies’ Leaves?

Deadhead dying lily flowers throughout the blooming season for a tidy, well-kept look. Follow the stalk of the flower to the flower spike and use shears to cut it at a 45-degree angle. Remove yellow or browning stalks in the late fall after your first frost. Only remove leaves that have fully browned.

When pruning daylilies in spring, trim all dead plant matter and dispose of it safely away from the garden. Trimming daylilies for winter helps prevent disease and ensures plants are ready to resume growth in spring. Lilies can become unwieldy in a garden, so if your flower bed is big enough, you can prune them and leave the clippings to grow back into new plants. Trimming daylilies in the fall once the leaves are dormant is easy.

After the lily plant has finished flowering and the foliage starts to turn yellow, you can cut back the stems to the ground. Leave the foliage intact until it has completely withered, as it provides valuable nutrients. Daylilies can be cut back in mid-late autumn, but it is not strictly necessary. Cutting them back in the fall is easiest when the plant has started to die back naturally.

Green leaves should not be cut as they absorb energy, which is critical for next season’s flowering. The stems can be tied together and once they are brown and brittle, cut them back to ground level. Only remove leaves that have fully browned.

It is highly recommended to cut the brown tips off your peace lily, as these are generally dead tissue. Dead leaves or branches should be cut back to their origin, while overgrown leaves or branches can be trimmed just above a node or leaf set.

Pruning potted peace lilies during their periods of active growth helps them produce new flowers, buds, and foliage more efficiently. After flowering, deadhead the lilies, e.g., cut spent flowers off, but do not cut back the stems. Remove yellow or brown leaves to prevent the plant from wasting energy on them and leave as much main stem and leaves as possible when tidying up lilies.