As well as enjoying the fruits of your labour from earlier in the year – whether it's picking home-grown veggies or admiring perennials in full bloom – time spent in the garden during July is largely centered around watering, weeding and feeding.

However, it's important not to leave pruning off your monthly gardening task list, according to Country Living.

July is the perfect time to give many of your plants a summer trim – to prevent disease, encourage new growth, promote better flowering and help train your buds.

Experts share 5 plants to prune this month, as well as tips on how to tackle them, to ensure your garden is looking its best for the rest of summer and well into the autumn months…

Deutzia / Japanese Snow Flower

"With over 60 species of deutzia, this glorious garden shrub is loved for its profuse clusters of fragrant star-shaped flowers – with 'Yuki Snowflake' or 'Chardonnay Pearls' perfect for those gardeners favouring white blooms, pink varieties including 'Raspberry Sundae' or a mix of white and pink like 'Yuki Cherry Blossom,'" gardening and greenhouse expert Lucie Bradley from Easy Garden Irrigation told Country Living.

"To ensure you get glorious blooms the following year, it's important you prune Deutzia once they have flowered (so July is the peak time for this). It's crucial that you prune after flowering, but that you don't leave it too late as you could remove new growth. It's this new growth that produces the flowers in the following year."

To prune effectively, Lucie suggests finding the stems that have flowered but are becoming woody. Look for a healthy side shoot and prune to just above that point. Doing this will stimulate new growth ready for blooming next year.

She adds: "You can also help to maintain the size and shape of the plant at the same time, thinning out crowded areas by removing crossing stems, as well as removing any old, woody stems. By pruning the tips of healthy stems you will also encourage bushier growth for a healthy plant and even more blooms."

Honeysuckle

With distinctive, trumpet-shaped flowers in vibrant colours and a gorgeous fragrance, there is no wonder that honeysuckle is such a popular plant and a great addition to any garden.

Lucie says: "Usually seen covering garden fences, vine honeysuckles, such as 'Lonicera japonica', are fast growing and will climb and spread rapidly.

"Pruning them is one way of preventing them from becoming 'invasive', allowing you to control the size and shape, as well as maintaining the health of the plant by removing dead or damaged branches and preventing overcrowding – which makes it more susceptible to diseases such as powdery mildew and leaf blight. In addition, pruning honeysuckle will stimulate more blooms the following year. "

When pruning, always use a sharp, clean pair of secateurs and form angled cuts away from the main stem to discourage water from collecting and encourage healing, suggets Lucie.

She continues: "Ideally cut back to where there is a side branch or bud as this will encourage new growth. If you are pruning away old woody branches these can be taken back to about 60cm from the ground. The best time to prune honeysuckle is once it has finished flowering, so for many varieties late July will be ideal. Light pruning of stems after they have flowered will encourage new growth and future flowering."

Weigela

According to Lucie, the best time to prune weigela is after it has just finished flowering, as this ensures you don't cut away the buds that will form next year's flowers. This means that mid-July is the last time to prune this shrub if you don't want to reduce the number of flowers it produces in the following year.

She adds: "When pruning, make cuts either just above where a branch forks or above a bud as this will encourage new growth. You'll need to use clean, sharp secateurs for this light pruning – but when you are removing dead or diseased branches or reshaping, then you may need to use loppers or a pruning saw to create a clean cut through the thicker stems.

"If you have allowed your weigela to become overgrown then harder pruning will be required and should be done over several years, pruning back to ground level and removing the thickest, oldest branches first and being careful not to remove more than one-third of the shrubs branches each year."

Wisteria

Lucie explains that to control the size and maximise blooms, wisteria is normally pruned twice a year: once now in July through to August and once in early spring before new growth appears.

She adds: "The July pruning is carried out to control wisterias rampant growth and the aim is to cut away any whippy, green shoots which are this year's growth, trimming them back to being 12 to 15cm long. This should encourage short, flowering spurs next year so that your plant will be covered in cascades of fragrant flowers.

This pruning also allows you to control the size of your wisteria so that it doesn't overtake house or garden walls.

Lavender

According to Pollyanna Wilkinson, July is the perfect time to prune the all-rounder (for scent, pollinators, colour and more) of our summer gardens: lavender.

"Not pruning equals woody stems, a messy form, and potentially even fewer flowers," she says. "We prune lavender straight after flowering so that it has some time to put on new growth to protect it over the winter."

Grab your lavender by the hand and cut it right back just until you reach the new green growth. Then, you'll be left with a nice, neat green plant that is ready for new growth.