> Next: Controlling Shrub Growth
Pruning Basics
Timing, Tools, and Technique
The three T’s of pruning success are timing and technique plus the right tools. Each is equally important to great outcomes when controlling the growth of your landscape plants.
Provide regular care for shrubs, hedges, and trees in your landscape. Prune deciduous and evergreen broadleaf shrubs after they flower but before new growth of foliage ends, an easy way to let nature fill in cuts made while shaping and forming the shrub.
Prune and shape evergreen conifers when their new-growth “candles” sprout, cutting them off at their junction with the whorl or last-year’s growth beneath.
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Within those general guidelines, the actual best time to prune depends most on the climate in which the plant is growing, the growth habits of the plant being pruned, and what you are trying to achieve.
Fortunately, there are several guidelines to help you.
Generally, the shaping of a young deciduous tree—even the removal of a large limb from a mature deciduous tree—is best done at the end of the tree’s dormant season. That’s when the tree is still leafless and before its growth starts in spring.
Shaping of evergreen trees, on the other hand, should be performed in spring or early summer while active growth is taking place.
As a general rule, avoid pruning during the autumn or early winter months. Trees must be fully dormant prior to pruning. Pruning too early may encourage tender new growth and result in frost damage due to winter cold.
Feel free to cut away diseased or dead wood on a tree or shrub at any time of the year. It’s best to make this part of your routine garden maintenance, along with regular pinching of growth buds to shape growth.
Shrub Care
For flowering shrubs, the time to prune is guided most often by the season of their bloom. Let’s look at some popular flowering shrubs, then contrast them to shrubs grown for their foliage.
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Spring-flowering shrubs such as azalea, forsythia, and weigela are normally pruned after they bloom. This allows their flower buds to set naturally in the autumn and provides for a nice flower display the following spring.
By contrast summer-blooming shrubs are best pruned in the dormant winter season, since they form their flower buds on new growth, which begins to develop in the spring.
Among the summer-blooming shrubs that benefit from dormant season pruning are abelia, heavenly bamboo, beauty bush, crape myrtle, cranberry bush, viburnum, and sweet shrub.
Prune shrubs that are grown for their foliage rather than their flowers during late winter, in spring, or in early summer. You’ll love the result.
Pruning typically generates a flush of new growth right below each cut. Making key pruning cuts in late winter or early spring results in a shrub that is fuller or bushier. Save summer pruning for trimming wayward shoots or removing unwanted suckers that sprout below the graft from a shrub’s rootstock.
Basic Pruning Equipment
Both simple hand tools and powered shears and clippers are used to prune trees and shrubs.
Pay careful attention to quality when acquiring pruning and lopping shears, clippers, hedge shears, and pruning saws for your toolshed. Sharp and proper tools in good condition make care into a simple tax.
Topiary
Topiary is the complex and imaginative sculpture of trees and shrubs to form geometric forms or representations of animals and objects, from rabbits to chess pieces.
The plant is gradually formed to its final shape as it grows, using careful pruning and tying its branches to forms to direct their growth.
Both western and eastern cultures have historically embraced fanciful topiary sculptures in their formal gardens.
Controlling Shrub Growth Annual Pruning of Deciduous Shrubs Annual Pruning of Deciduous Trees Pruning Evergreens and Conifers Special Major Pruning Pruning Tools and Equipment timing tools technique healthy shrub care shaping controlling growth pruning tools pruning deciduous prune evergreen conifer broadleaf time to prune timing season dormancy spring winter summer growth habit species remove frost damage suckers rootstock root crown variety graft pinching pinch-pruning cut disease diseased wood branches rot dead wood flower bloom blooming flowering shrubs azalea forsythia weigela foliage abelia heavenly bamboo beauty bush crape myrtle cranberry bush viburnum sweet shrub flush growth bypass hand pruning tool anvil hand pruning tool pruners lopping shears pruning saw pole pruning tool