Felder's Haircuts for Plants

What's the difference between grooming our hair and landscape pruning? Outside style, not much, in actual principle.

It's a matter of, to quote Paul Harvey, "subjective indignation." I choose what, where, and how to prune what sprouts out of my head, leaving long locks but regularly razoring my neck and cheeks, carefully shaping my moustache, plucking errant eyebrows. All the while knowing what I remove will grow back.

Ditto for pruning. We mow lawns, shear hedges, and shape shrubs into box, cone, or meatball shapes or fanciful topiaries including poodling and pollarding like "crape murder" which, like it or not, is actually a widely practiced form of topiary. We confine large shrubs and potted tropical plants to small spaces, espalier trees flat against walls, rejuvenate roses and overgrown shrubs, and remove wayward stems that keep snatching at our hats.

We train muscadine vines onto trellises and shape and thin fruit trees, starting the day, they are planted, to train them to have a short trunk and a handful of well-spaced framework limbs, to keep them productive and easier to harvest. We routinely remove dead, broken, or diseased plant parts.

Note: leaving a dead tree that is not a danger to property has huge benefits to an amazing assortment of urban wildlife. Called a "snag" by forest ecologists, this is also a very common celebrated feature in nearly all English gardens.

With all these and more reasons to prune it's no wonder there is so much confusion about how and when to do most of those. Here are a few considerations to help guide decisions.

First, pruning is positive - releases stress hormones that quickly stimulate strong new growth from dormant buds farther down the stems. I have rejuvenated countless head-high azaleas, hollies, boxwoods, overgrown roses, my large weeping fig, rubber tree, shefflera, and many others to just foot or two tall leafless stubs, and they came back stronger than ever.

When this is done it is very important to go back and snip the tips of new growth to make it branch out instead of shooting up overhead. A hard-cut shrub then tip pruned a couple of times will be full and attractive by mid-summer. Done this countless times.

To keep plants looking natural, keeping in mind that new growth generally sprouts right below fresh cuts, I usually keep to a rounded top snow-cone shape, not straight across. I carefully prune right above a bud or leaf joint that is pointing the direction I want new growth to head, usually upward and outward. And I snip off little twigs to reduce clutter.

One attention to detail can make a huge difference down the road: When removing twigs, branches, and limbs, don't leave stubs, which don't heal well and usually rot down into the stems. Cut as close as you can. And other than for cosmetics pruning paints are not needed, ever.

When to prune? If it blooms in late winter or spring (azaleas, blueberries, blackberries, camellias, climbing roses) wait till after flowering to prune. If it blooms on new growth in the summer (roses, crape myrtles, hydrangeas, althea, figs), cut in the winter.

To reduce winter injury to tender new growth, stop pruning evergreens by the middle of September, and earlier in July for spring bloomers so new growth has growth time to mature and make flower buds before frost. I sometimes shear my boxwoods and smooth hedges after a frost has made them go dormant, but that's about it for fall pruning.

Pruning is positive and as necessary as is grooming our own faces. Just avoid giving plants bad haircuts.