When to prune junipers?
- Botanical name
- Juniperus communis
- Family
- Cupressaceae
Junipers are pruned from March to April. They are planted from October to April.
Junipers are woody perennials.
The juniper has no regular pruning. It does not shoot again from old wood, so a hard cut bush never covers itself again and can begin to die back. On a young plant only light cuts for the framework are made, later the shoots are merely thinned. The cutting comes before the new growth starts. Autumn is left out, because the shrub would go into winter with soft fresh shoots.
The juniper is evergreen and loses water through its needles in winter as well. The roots have to take hold before the cold arrives, so it goes in during autumn or spring and never in midsummer.
The common juniper grows upright or creeps along the ground. Both forms spread to about the same width, so the planting distance is the same whichever one is chosen. It also grows in a container, where it stays considerably smaller than in the ground.
Junipers through the year
- pruning
- planting
In short
Growing conditions
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- In summer and early autumn bright orange blotches appear on the upper side of the pear leaves, and later, on the underside opposite them, brown outgrowths like galls. On the juniper there are lasting swellings on branches and stems, from which orange jelly-like horns push out in spring after damp days.
- Prevention
- The fungus needs both plants and cannot close its cycle without one of them: from the pear it goes to the juniper, from the juniper in spring back to the pear. A juniper near a pear is therefore not an innocent neighbour. The spores travel a good way on the wind, so removing one bush is no guarantee.
- What to do
- Cut the infected parts of the branches out of the juniper or take the bush away from the neighbourhood of the pear. On the pear cut out any cankered wounds on the branches. Stripping the leaves off a badly infected pear does more harm than good.
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Related plants
The plant below is in the same botanical family (Cupressaceae).
Sources about the plant: GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, Iowa State University Extension, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Penn State Extension, Royal Horticultural Society, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 31 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: EPPO Global Database.