OMG...my most unfavorite cruel gardening trick in the world! Every time I go to North Carolina and see huge, stately trees, covered in pink and lilac blossoms, I come home really mad at whoever told Floridians to hack back the crape myrtles every year!! It's horrid! And it does not produce more blooms. It just produces giant crape myrtle trunks with little bitty "heads" on top. They look like technicolor broccoli! ACK!!

Stop the madness! Just say "NO!" to crape murder!

Marcia

This drives me crazy too! If they wanted small crapes then they should have planted the bush size or small tree sized ones!

Ignorance or laziness is what I think. It is much easier to prune one wrong than to do it correctly.

Actually, mine are so big now that I really don't want to cut anything since that would be considered work and not fun anymore. I will look them over and see if any crossing branches need trimming, but that's about it.
I love them! they remind me of white lilac :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: my myrtle glen

Popping in for a visit from Washington, DC--a city with lots of crepe myrtles--I can report that "crepe murder" used to be very rare here but is becoming more and more common in my area. I'm especially saddened when big, old, magnificent specimens that have been left alone for 10-20 years or more are chopped back to stubs. Where did this hideous practice come from and who on earth is telling gardeners to do this?

Hi, JohnnieB. For a long time, gardeners down here were told to trim the crapes back every year in order to promote heavier bloom, and for some reason, this piece of advice (ridiculous as it is) was taken as gospel. It swept the state. You will almost never find a fully grown, unhacked crape myrtle around here. The medians are filled with trees that never get taller than 8 feet or so, and are always out of proportion. Tiny little tops, great big bottoms.

Tom MacCubbin says crapes never need pruning, except if one has overgrown a certain spot (having been planted, perhaps, in a spot that wasn't really large enough to accommodate the variety planted.) He recommends leaving them entirely alone, or if you can't stand the little dried "balls" that form after blooming, just cutting those off. Generally speaking, the trees will perform better and they will certainly look better if they are left to grow naturally.

I agree with Tom 100%. My grandmother had a lilac colored crape planted in her front yard that was a beautiful tree of about 60' or so. It looked wonderful all year, even in winter, when it takes on a sculptural beauty. And when it bloomed...oh, MY! It was fantastic! You just don't see them like that any more.

Marcia

I learned on this website not to hard trim crape myrtles. Mine got so big at the old house I was relieved to know it, too.

I think it is kind of like the old story about the woman who cut the ends off the pot roast before putting it in the pot. When asked why, she said her Mother always did it. When her Mother was asked why, she said HER mother always did it. When the grandmother was asked why she in turn said HER mother always did it. When finally the great-grandmother was asked why she said "Because the pan was too small"

I was just copying what I saw and knew no better.

Around here they prune oleanders like that as well. Would it be for supposedly the same reason. I have never pruned mine like that, but thought I was remiss in not doing so.

We never prune our CMs. Our neighbor is one of those that hacks them back to the stump, then complains that ours are growing so much better. Gee, go figure.

In the little space between the sidewalk and the road at my school, they planted beautiful crepes. I was so proud of them for the good choice, as the crepes would never get big enough to get into the powerline, and they were already so tall that their branches were out of the way for the sidewalk.
That winder, they murderedthem, and now the new growth comes in, aiming strait at the faces of the people on the sidewalks, who end up breaking the branches back to keep from being slapped by them.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I think it stems from the many, many uneducated landscapers out there. How many people out there with a truck and trailer and yard equipment call themselves "landscapers"? I've seen 'two guys and a truck landscapers' doing most of the damage.

Homeowners, who do not know any better, see the truck with 'landscaper' and hire them who recommend CM Murder (my neighbor's landscaper does this every year...). If it says 'landscaper' on the truck, they must know what they are doing, right?

A good example is my next door neighbor hired a "landscaper" who cut down to the ground an old Florida Gardenia shrub that was on our shared property line. I asked the guy (after it was too late...)why he did that and he proceeded to tell me that shrubs need to be removed after 10+ years. WHAT!?!? Says who?!?!

If something is thriving and blooming, it means it likes where it is and there's no reason to hack it to the ground just because it's old. Sheesh...

These are the same people who proceed to top oak trees too.

Our neighbor across the street has two lovely lavender crepes that he just recently beheaded. Sigh... mine still has all the seed pods (?), twigs, etc. on it. In spring I'll trim some of the dead stuff off, but that's as far as I'll go (lazy gardener here!!)

In south Houston suburb of Clear Lake, the CMs were so big they formed a canopy over the streets. Guess they didn't get the word about pruning.
ron

I was recently visiting the orlando area, and was shocked by the mass murder of all these crape myrtles. Down here in miami, thankfully, no one has thought of chopping a myrtle down to the ground, but the day that they do come up with the idea, i think all trees are going to end up that way, sadly....