Before you begin to prune and train your plants, it helps to understand why it is necessary. By following the correct techniques, you can be safe in the knowledge that you are pruning correctly and at the optimum time, and training growth in a way that will encourage it to thrive. Learning to select the correct tools to make clean cuts is also key to producing good results and keeping your plants healthy.
Many trees and shrubs, such as this elder ( Sambucus ), benefit from being pruned hard each year in order to keep them healthy and their growth vigorous and productive of flowers and fruit.
WHY PRUNE AND TRAIN?
Many trees, shrubs, and climbers will grow happily when left to their own devices, but pruning and training can be used in a huge variety of ways to influence their appearance and to enhance their ornamental qualities, allowing you to create and maintain a beautiful garden. Careful pruning and training increases the quality and quantity of flowers on many climbers and shrubs, which may then clothe walls and archways with their lush growth. Pruning is also vital to remove diseased or dead stems to keep plants healthy and can even trigger new vigour in tired overgrown specimens.
FOR PLANT HEALTH
Pruning and training can be used throughout a plants life to promote good health and deal with any problems that may arise. Routine pruning to create an open shape, free from congested branches, not only makes a plant more attractive but also helps to prevent disease by improving airflow around the foliage and stopping branches rubbing together in the wind.
Damaged and dead growth provide an easy route for disease to enter a plant, and so are always removed first during pruning. Cutting back to healthy tissue using clean sharp tools halts the spread of any disease already present and allows plants to heal quickly, minimizing the chance of new infections and encouraging strong new growth.
Naturally elegant Japanese maples ( Acer ) are pruned only minimally.
TO SHAPE PLANTS
Most gardeners regularly trim a hedge to keep it to their desired shape, but other useful pruning and training methods can also be employed to manipulate the growth of garden plants, often to spectacular effect. To achieve the best results, begin pruning when plants are young, so that you can establish the balanced structure of branches at the heart of a specimen tree or shrub, or encourage certain shrubs to develop into lollipop standards. Many flowering and berry-bearing shrubs can also be trained to grow tightly against a wall, which produces a spectacular display and is an excellent way to accommodate large plants in small gardens.
Pruning plants in order to maintain their planned forms is always much easier and more rewarding than trying to tame the growth of vigorous climbers, shrubs, or trees that have outgrown their allotted space.
Train wisteria to maximize the impact of its cascading flowers.
Grow Pruning and Training | WHY PRUNE AND TRAIN?
Clipped topiary adds formal structure to a garden, whatever its size.
TO BOOST PERFORMANCE
Plants react to being cut back by producing fresh new growth, so make use of this response to get the best from your plants. Well-timed pruning and careful training can promote flowering, increasing both the quality and quantity of blooms on a single plant, sometimes followed by a brilliant display of decorative berries or hips on fruiting plants in autumn.
Regular pruning or trimming each spring can combat the tendency of some climbers and shrubs to become leggy or bare at the base as they age, encouraging compact bushy growth, which makes an attractive feature when the plants are not in flower.
Severe pruning is also frequently used to renovate a plant that has become overgrown. Removing its tangled old stems stimulates vigorous new growth and can revitalize a tired corner of the garden.
Encourage roses to bloom freely with the appropriate pruning and training.
Fluffy seedheads make an attractive feature once clematis flowers have faded.
Train climbing hydrangea ( Hydrangea petiolaris ) so it covers a shady wall.
FOR ATTRACTIVE YOUNG GROWTH
The young shoots of some trees and shrubs are valued for decorative qualities that are quite different from those of the mature plants. Specific pruning techniques, known as coppicing or pollarding, involve cutting older growth back hard often every spring to promote vigorous new stems ( see ). These shoots either carry large colourful leaves, such as the circular silvery juvenile foliage of gums ( Eucalyptus ), or boast vividly coloured bark, like the bold reds and oranges of some dogwood ( Cornus ) varieties, which lights up a border in winter. This severe pruning can also be a useful technique for limiting the size of large plants, allowing them to be grown successfully in small gardens.
Coppiced dogwoods ( Cornus ) produce a profusion of new fiery growth.