Maintain the health, shape, and beauty of your ornamental plantings. We provide expert shrub pruning, hedge shearing, hydrangea care, and winter wind protection.
Shrub care on Martha's Vineyard covers structural pruning, hedge shearing, hydrangea-specific timing (mophead, lacecap, paniculata, and oakleaf handled differently), boxwood blight monitoring, and winter wind-and-salt protection for evergreens. Infinity Landscaping prunes by species and season (never one-size-fits-all) and applies burlap or anti-desiccant spray on coastal-exposed evergreens before winter storms.
Hedges require regular shearing to stay dense and neat. We trim boxwoods, privet, and arborvitae hedges to clean, straight lines, ensuring the bottom of the hedge stays slightly wider than the top to allow sunlight to reach the lower branches.
For natural-shaped ornamentals like hydrangeas, laurels, maples, and viburnums, we use hand shears. We remove dead, crossing, or diseased branches, opening the plant's interior to air and light to support overall health and flower growth.
Hydrangeas are a Vineyard signature. We identify your hydrangea varieties (mophead, panicle, or smooth) and prune them during their correct seasonal windows, ensuring we protect next season's flower buds.
Up-island winds can burn evergreen foliage. We apply organic anti-desiccant sprays to evergreens in late fall to reduce water loss, and build custom burlap wraps around delicate shrubs to protect them from winter windburn.
Pruning is more than just cutting back branches: it is a critical horticultural practice that affects a plant's disease resistance, structure, and ability to bloom. On Martha's Vineyard, where high humidity and fog can encourage fungal diseases, proper pruning is essential.
We prune with plant health in mind. By clearing crossing branches and thinning dense centers, we improve air circulation through the foliage, allowing leaves to dry quickly and reducing the risk of leaf spot, powdery mildew, and rot. We also disinfect our pruning blades between properties to prevent the spread of plant pathogens, ensuring your gardens stay healthy and robust.
A selection of recent landscape maintenance projects across Martha's Vineyard.
Cut out dead, damaged, or diseased branches to protect the plant.
Use selective cuts to guide natural plant growth and maintain balance.
Trim formal hedges to straight, structured borders.
Collect and recycle all branch clippings and leaves.
Inspect leaves and stems for insect damage or fungal signs.
Shearing creates a uniform outer surface and is appropriate for formal hedges that are intentionally maintained that way. Selective pruning removes individual branches at appropriate points to preserve a natural form, manage size, improve structure, or protect flowering wood. Repeatedly shearing every shrub can create dense outer growth, a bare interior, and fewer flowers on plants that bloom on older stems.
Before work begins, each plant group should be assigned a goal: formal shape, natural renewal, size reduction, clearance, flower protection, removal of damaged wood, or rejuvenation over more than one season. That distinction helps avoid treating a mixed garden as one continuous hedge.
