Many shrubs can be easily grown by taking cuttings in the summer, fall or winter. The pages on individual species contain specific recommendations. Use the following as guidelines for all cuttings:

Use only the current year's growth, preferably taking the cutting mid-June to mid-August. Discard the soft, fleshy tip of the branch. The cutting should be about 6 inches (15 cm) long, with the top cut made at a low angle about 1/4 inch (6 mm) above a bud and the bottom cut straight across about 1/4 inch (6 mm) below a bud, with one or more buds in between. This is the ideal that is not often reached. Try shorter or longer cuttings if necessary. The angle of cuts is a simple way of making sure that you know which is the base of the cutting. This way, you will never plant a cutting upside down (a common mistake when using cuttings without leaves). Cut the top leaves in half unless they are quite small and strip away any lower leaves.

As soon after collecting as possible, cuttings should be placed in a bed located in a semi-shaded area. The bed can be as large as you need and have time to look after. Let's use a 4 foot x 8 foot (1.2 m x 2.4 m) bed as an example. The easiest method is to scrape the weeds off an area with a shovel or mattock and place 3-4 layers of newspaper on the ground, extending beyond the boundaries of the bed. Construct your frame out of 1 inch x 8 inch (2.5 cm x 20 cm) or 2 inch x 10 inch (5 cm x 25 cm) material and set in place. Place a 6 inch (15 cm) layer of clean, inland builder's sand in the bed and water thoroughly. Mulch outside the bed's base with wood chips or bark to keep weeds from infiltrating. Sprinkle a small amount of #2 rooting hormone (we use Stim-Root, available from most nurseries and stores with gardening sections), on the flat top of an ice cream container. Dip each cutting in the hormone, covering the base, just before you plant it. Rooting hormone stimulates better root development. Once it has come in contact with plant material, do not return the hormone to its original container. It can contaminate the remaining product and should be discarded at the end of each cutting session.

Cuttings should be planted so that about 1 inch (2.5 cm) of the tip is exposed. Use a screwdriver, stick or whatever you have to make a hole, place cutting to desired depth and firm sand around cutting. Place cuttings 2-3 inches (5-7.5 cm) apart, depending on species and size of the leaves. A bed this size can hold between 500-1150 cuttings. Cover the bed with white plastic, old windows or plywood - anything to keep the moisture levels high. Check weekly to see if the sand is still moist, and water if necessary. After about three weeks, start giving a little tug on a few cuttings of each species. When you feel resistance, you have succeeded in getting root growth. Dig up a few and see what they look like. You can plant them out right away in a shady, protected location, or transplant them to the nursery and wait a year or two until you have larger plants.

These cuttings can be made as soon as the plants become dormant in the fall, after the leaves have dropped, and anytime before the buds swell in the spring. Again, use the current year's growth, discard the softest growth at the tip and make cuttings the same as you would in summer. Remember to use a slanted cut at at the top of the cutting and a straight cut at the bottom. We tie winter cuttings in bundles of 50, marking each bundle with a plastic tag and recording species, location, date and other information that might be useful. The base of the bundle is then dipped in #3 rooting hormone and the bundle is placed in a plastic bag. Store this bag in a refrigerator or cool basement, or in sand in the cutting bed under a thick layer of mulch. In the spring, as soon as the ground is workable, you have two options. Place the cuttings in a cutting bed as described above, to be transplanted later; or plant them in a regular garden bed at 3-6 inch (7.5-15 cm) spacings. Spacing depends on when you want to use the plants - wider spacing allows you to leave the cuttings in the bed an extra year if you want to set out larger transplants. These beds need to have loose soil so that the new roots are free to develop. Mulch well and keep well-watered, since a garden bed can not maintain the cutting bed's high humidity level.