I Asked AI to Create a Pruning Calendar – This Prompt Tells Gardeners Exactly How and When to Prune

If there is one area of gardening that confounds new gardeners, it’s pruning. Every plant has its own ideal timing and method, and if you want to get the best out of your garden, you have to pay attention. But how do you get it right for every plant? Even after 10 years of living and gardening at this property, I still occasionally miss the optimal moment. At my worst, I’ve pruned too late and lost that year’s flowers – or forgotten altogether and ended up with leggy, woody shrubs.

The problem with knowing how and when to prune is that it’s an intuitive process – there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, especially when you factor in different climates and last frost dates. Skilled gardeners can look at a plant and know it’s time to prune – and how much to trim. But if you’re a beginner, or simply new to a plant, it’s a steep learning curve. And while more forgiving perennials will take an overzealous, ill-timed haircut in their stride, others will pay the price for your lack of knowledge.

Until you build up that intuition with experience, the best way to time pruning is to make a pruning calendar. While a scrappy notebook will do the job, it can take a while to research the needs of every plant, and it relies on you knowing what they all are. Enter AI – or, in my case, ChatGPT. I have a love-hate relationship with it (adapting my sourdough recipes to expand my baking repertoire? Love. Harming content creators because it repackages their work as its own? Hate), but I can’t deny it’s a powerful tool. So I wanted to see just how useful it could be in creating a bespoke pruning calendar, with timings and techniques tailored to my garden. Of course, you can use whatever AI app you have available.

Step 1 – ID the Plants

I started by putting myself in the shoes of a new gardener. I imagined their garden was a mix of mature plants inherited from the previous owners and some younger plants added in the last year or two – which is exactly what we did when we first moved here. I also assumed they might not know the identity of every plant. So that’s where I started.

Working across the two main borders in my backyard, I photographed each section, along with the patio pots. Then I uploaded the images to ChatGPT with this prompt: “I want to create a pruning calendar for my garden that tells me the optimal time to prune each plant and how much to cut. Stage 1: Here are photos of my plants – identify them.”

After telling me what a clever project this was and complimenting my mix of ornamentals and shrubs (flattery will get you nowhere, chatbot), it went through each photo individually and offered its best identification guess. It also included a disclaimer that it wasn’t certain about all of the plants and asked further questions about those – a rarity, as I often find AI to be disturbingly overconfident in giving incorrect advice.

For the most part, the general plant IDs were correct – AI didn’t attempt to offer the exact variety in most cases, which seems fair as the garden is still looking quite bare right now. It did misidentify a couple of plants – it thought my pieris japonica was a skimmia japonica – but nothing too troubling. It also missed out some plants, so you do need to be thorough and take follow-up photos. In hindsight, trying to capture the whole space in 10 photos (the upload limit) was optimistic. It would have worked better in small groupings – or even plant by plant – for more accurate answers, and better follow-up questions.

I have a lot of roses, and ChatGPT asked me to confirm whether I had climbers, though it didn’t mention rambling roses, which could trip up a beginner, as they need to be pruned at a different time. It also queried my hydrangeas, where pruning depends heavily on the type, but with some back and forth, it all got sorted.

Step 2 – Calculate the Weather Impact

This is where things could get complicated. My virtual assistant reassured me that year-to-year weather only really shifts pruning timings by about 2–3 weeks. However, in regions with very cold winters and big temperature swings – like the Upper Midwest, Rocky Mountains, or Northern Plains – a very cold spring could delay pruning by as much as 3–5 weeks. But, not to worry, after a long conversation, I learned that ChatGPT just needs your location (ideally your zip or postal code), along with instructions to factor in recent weather and frost dates.

At this stage, the app was happy to give me a list of tasks I should be doing to my plants now and in the months ahead. It told me that right now I should be hard pruning my shrub roses and buddleja, cutting back coneflowers and sedum, and lightly trimming leylandii. It gave some fairly basic instructions for the rest of the year, which all seemed reasonable enough. Except that, in classic AI style, it neglected to include a large number of plants from the brief…

After prompting it to add those back in, I eventually got a complete yearly plan, and the timing largely checked out. What it lacked, however, were visual cues – arguably the most important piece of the puzzle if you want to build real pruning knowledge and intuition.

So, I asked it to resupply the list with signs to check for. You might not yet know what “buds swelling along long stems” looks like, but if you start checking plants at the right time of year, you’ll soon figure it out.

Step 3 – Work Out the Method

Knowing when to prune is one thing – but how much should you cut? Which pruning tools should you use? And what else should you tackle at the same time? I asked ChatGPT, and the response was surprisingly detailed.

My pruning plan for March now includes, for each plant, a visual cue, how much to cut, and which pruning tool to use (I told it which specific tools I owned, and it enthusiastically approved of my Felco 2 pruning shears, available on Amazon). It also suggests extra tasks, such as whether I should fertilize, mulch, or divide at the same time. It even recommends leaving a few coneflower seedheads for birds and warns that I should wear protection when cutting back euphorbia, thanks to its irritating sap.

The app further noted that my garden actually has five key pruning dates per year, where I can get almost everything done. It also suggested that if I need extra reassurance on how to prune a particular plant, I could upload a close-up photo for more tailored advice.

My Pruning Essentials

So, Was it Worth it?

Creating an AI pruning calendar was more effort than I initially expected – there was a fair amount of back and forth to ensure it accurately listed all of the plants, and it took me a while to refine the prompt for timings based on my climate. However, as long as you take your time to work through the process, it’s a brilliant tool to help you manage your pruning.

One concern is that you risk losing touch with the process – relying on a schedule instead of reading your plants. That’s why I think it’s important to ask the AI to include visual cues, so you can continue building up that firsthand experience.

You’ll also need to push AI a little more if you want to drill down into advanced pruning techniques. So, as a final step, I asked it to resupply the calendar with one “pro pruning tip” per plant. Alongside the basics – like cutting to an outward-facing bud at a 45-degree angle, and desired shaping – it suggested techniques to improve flowering, such as a partial Chelsea chop, which can give you two waves of blooms instead of one.

All in all, it’s a worthwhile exercise that can help gardeners at any stage – whether you’re a complete beginner, looking to refine your technique, or simply trying to get organized.

My Final Pruning Calendar Prompt

Copy and paste this prompt into ChatGPT (or your preferred AI tool), and fill in the details:

I want you to help me create a detailed pruning calendar for my garden. The goal is to produce a practical month-by-month guide I can follow each year.

My location is: [insert location including ZIP or postal code]

Please use my location to:

• Check the local climate and frost dates
• Consider recent weather patterns for the current year
• Adjust the pruning timing if the season is early or late

If possible, tailor the advice to the climate conditions for this year, not just generic guidance.

These are the plants in my garden:

[insert plant list]

If I’m unsure about any plants, I can upload photos and you can help identify them first.

Please create a pruning calendar that includes:

1. Month-by-month pruning schedule
2. Visual cues that show the plant is ready to prune
3. How much of the plant to cut off
4. Which pruning tool to use (bypass pruners, loppers, shears, etc.)
5. Any extra tasks to do at the same time (feeding, tying in stems, mulching, etc.)
6. One advanced pruning tip professionals use for each plant

Please organise the information clearly by month and plant, so it’s easy to follow in the garden.