Pruning

HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text by Graham Clarke; copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers

Artworks and design © HarperCollinsPublishers

The majority of photographs in this book were taken by Tim Sandall. A number of other images were supplied by David Sarton.

Cover photography by Tim Sandall

Photographic props: Coolings Nurseries, Rushmore Hill, Knockholt, Kent, TN14 7NN, www.coolings.co.uk

Design and editorial: Focus Publishing, Sevenoaks, Kent

Project editor: Guy Croton

Editor: VanessaTownsend

Project co-ordinator: Caroline Watson

Design & illustration: David Etherington

Editorial assistant: George Croton

For HarperCollins

Senior managing editor: Angela Newton

Design manager: Luke Griffin

Editor: Alastair Laing

Assistant editor: Lisa John

Production: Chris Gurney

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007192809M

Ebook Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9780007596621 Version: 2014-08-21

The one thing that all gardens, whatever the shape, size or position, have in common is the ability to grow plants. Beyond this, unless you are planning to have just a lawn, with perhaps some annuals or bedding plants, you are almost certainly going to be growing a few woody plants. In their simplest form these are the trees, shrubs and wall climbers and, sometimes, woody herbaceous perennials, that are familiar to all of us. There are also fruiting plants, like apples and pears or blackberries and raspberries, and there are hedges, and roses, and vines, and even ground cover and creeping plants. All of these subjects will, at some stage in their growth, need to be pruned.

They may have outgrown their space, they may have become old or diseased, or they may have developed too much woody growth at the expense of flowers or fruits. These are the sorts of reasons why woody plants need to be pruned, and without this kind of intervention by us the plants would become ugly, misshapen or non-productive – or all of these. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to tell you how to prune the woody plants you have chosen to grow, or have inherited.

Pruning has an enormous amount of mystique about it, and it shouldn’t have – it is not, as they say, ‘rocket science’. Though science, in the botanical sense, does play a part, which is why on these pages we look at the anatomy of woody plants from the roots up. It is vital to know, before you cut in to a plant, both why you are doing it and whether you are doing it in the right place.

Before you proceed to design your garden, or prepare pruning schedules with an existing garden, you should identify what type of garden you want. Are you a diligent kind of gardener – the sort that likes immaculate lawn edges, with not a weed in sight? If so, you will probably want neatly trimmed hedges, with woody plants in their proper place, flowering or fruiting to optimum potential. If this is you, then there will be much more pruning to do.

Pruning can help small flowering trees such as Crataegus laevigata ‘Rosea Flore Pleno’ produce a flush of attractive blossom during the spring and early summer

Bamboos, such as this Phyllostachys nigra, only require occasional thinning

Alternatively, are you a more ‘natural’ or ‘informal’ kind of gardener, happy to allow plants to develop into their own shapes and habits? If you are more like this, you will have a much easier time of it, but probably will not have plants giving optimum performance.

The pruning of fruit plants, from the biggest apple trees to the smallest cordon gooseberries, with vines, bushes and cane fruits all demanding specialist attention, is covered in this book in detail. You should also have an understanding of how grafting (connecting a rootstock of one plant, to the top-growth of another) can influence how many plants develop, and how you should care for them.