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Friday, February 21, 2025

Pruning – Why It’s Important in Gardening and Landscape Maintenance

Pruning is the selective removal of plant parts, including branches, buds, leaves and blooms. It is a critical element of good gardening and landscape maintenance. Pruning can be done on both soft-tissue (herbaceous) and woody plants such as trees and shrubs. Pruning can be used to maintain plant health, promote new growth, enhance flowering and fruit production, create specialized forms such as espaliers, topiaries and hedges, and manage the size and shape of trees and shrubs.

It can help you to see your surroundings better. Pruned plants look healthier and are easier to work with than a tree that is overgrown or has out of control limbs hanging down from its sides.

If left unchecked, overgrown trees and shrubs can become a tripping or falling risk, especially in stormy weather. They can also block out sunlight from surrounding plants, or hang over structures such as houses and cars. Pruning removes these hazards and makes your yard safer for people and pets to move through.

Dead and dying limbs can cause diseases that spread to healthy plant parts or to nearby plants. Removing them prevents the spread of these diseases and allows the plant to concentrate its energy into promoting healthy growth.

The Time of Year to Prune

Many plants that produce attractive flowers in spring are best pruned right after they finish their blooms since their next season’s flowers develop on wood that was grown the previous year. Examples of these plants include azalea, lilac, gardenia, rhododendron, mountain laurel, forsythia and chokeberry.

Fall and winter pruning can be done for other types of foliage plants such as oak twig dogwood, holly, American holly and pyracantha. Other types of shrubs and small trees can be pruned during any season to remove out-of-bounds shoots or to keep them looking neat and tidy.

Some hedging species such as privet and boxwood respond well to pruning throughout the year. It’s important to know the basics of pruning before you make your first cut, however. How and where you cut has a significant impact on how the plant responds to the wound and how it develops new growth in future years. With the proper knowledge, you can learn how to prune a variety of different plants successfully and easily. The more you practice, the better your cuts will be. Learn the basic principles before you pick up a saw this winter. It’s much better to make fewer cuts with the proper technique than more cuts that are poorly executed. The less stress put on the plant by properly pruning it will lead to better, more predictable results in the future. A good reference guide for pruning is The Pruner’s Bible by Steve Solomon, a longtime British gardening expert and horticulturist with an RHS Master of Horticulture degree from England. This book has step-by-step instructions for pruning over 70 common plants. It also provides pruning guidelines to help novices avoid making common mistakes. It is available in both print and e-book formats.



source https://petestreeworxwa2.wordpress.com/2025/02/22/pruning-why-its-important-in-gardening-and-landscape-maintenance/

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