Beginner Gardening: Pruning an unknown hydrangea, 1 by teainthegarden

teainthegarden wrote:
While I am still trying to ID my hydrangea over in the ID forum, I need to clean up the bed a bit. (I think it's Annabelle). I am going to stop cutting down everything that looks dead until I am sure, but I am wondering what to do with the branches that are lying, or nearly lying on the ground? (I don't know if the children or the snow trampled them down or something else.) Should I cut them to the ground? Cut them to a few feet off the ground? Just leave them until I found out what kind of hydrangea it is?

These are the best pictures I have for the moment but I can take more if needed. You'll have to look past a whole bunch of other green stuff growing in that forsaken part of the yard under the trees.