Pruning

Want to get a plant to grow?

Chances are your best bet is to start by chopping it down to half it's size.

I'm serious: unless you're planning on the plant in question being a shade tree, the best thing you can usually do for a plant is cut it. Even a shade tree: pick it's core framework of best branches and get rid of everything else. The tree will go from being nice to stunning.

When I started learning to cut plants, I was about as timid as a kid driving a car the first time. Cutting three inches off a rose cane took time, consideration, and possibly a vote in Congress.

Then came our first rental house.

To start with, I've a weakness for roses. It used to be a mushy book-reader's sort of thing, but now it's more like a special fondness. When a rosebush is dead, it's time to tear it out and I don't cry over it. That wasn't always the case.

When we bought the rental house, I was in my every-rosebush-is-a-wonderful-thing-to-be-preserved-at-all-costs mentality. There was a fairly large tea rose someone had thoughtfully planted in a bed all of about 4.5 inches wide next to the front walk - you know, one of those sidewalks meant for planting petunias or impatiens or geraniums...but not bushes! And certainly not bushes with thorns!

It was a big bush and it had a nasty habit: mercilessly snagging unsuspecting pedestrians.

Granted, it's hard to be unsuspecting around a rosebush; and this wasn't one of your nice meek English roses with little thorns that might leave a scratch or two. This one had canes with thorns that sort of remind me of dragons' teeth. They might put an eye out if you get too close and I'm not convinced it's not carnivorous. People tended to forget about it, though, and this bush didn't like being ignored. It had a way of letting you know.

The scar on my arm is only visible in the right light. Honest.

Dad wanted to pull it out. Hoping to keep him from killing it altogether, I drew out a compromise: I would chop the thing down to about two feet high and be very careful to cut all the branches so the leading bud was pointing inward, thereby protecting everyone on the sidewalk. I didn't know you could actually train roses to grow this way at the time, but I'd noticed that when you cut a rose cane (one of those times Congress passed the measure), it tended to grow a branch at the base of the nearest bud pointing the direction that bud pointed.

Therefore, I performed my first real rose surgery.

I was sure I'd killed the thing. It started out five feet tall, but an hour and three landscape bags later I'd reduced it to knee-level. It looked pretty forlorn. Or so I thought at first.

To my astonishment and chagrin - since this was NOT what I had in mind - the rosebush proceeded to hit the eaves above it by the end of the summer. I could not keep the thing in check.

And that's when I learned the real secret to pruning. Cutting makes the plant grow better. Real cutting makes it grow beautifully.

Now, taking care of five yards, I don't have time to sit and ponder every cut. I've had to learn to be fast and clean at pruning a lot of different types of plants. Spireas. Boxwoods. Maple trees. Dogwoods. Roses. Ivy. Delphiniums. Butterfly bushes. Lilacs. Some I haven't found the names for yet.

All of them need pretty much the same treatment. Cut 'em down. Not all the way to the ground because a lot of things are grafted (and you don't want to cut a tree down, after all!) and cutting to the ground destroys the graft and allows the tough root stock to grow instead. Trees pretty much like most of their branches - especially the little skinny branchlets - pruned out, with only a wide framework of branches left. A strong tree is one that has it's leaders and scaffolds all neatly trimmed out and everything in between cut to allow all the energy to go to productive growth. A beautiful bush has lots of new growth on the outside and sturdy thick branches in the middle. Good flowers tend to grow on new shoots from an old root. Cut a fruit tree properly and you'll get a bumper crop where bad pruning only produces a bit here and there.

I used to really dislike pruning. Well, not all pruning - I never minded cutting the ugly stuff. It was the branches technically needing to come off to train the bush I had a tough time with. It was painful cutting down perfectly green, lush foliage...especially if the bush itself was having a hard time and the only place there was any good foliage was on top where I was supposed to be cutting. I always felt like I was killing the plants by doing this.

Now I know better. Cutting off perfectly good branches allows the whole plant to grow stronger than it was before.

I'm willing to bet people are the same way.

A lot of times pruning involves cutting off dead or dying branches, stuff that looks seriously ugly and isn't hard to part with. People have habits that need to be pruned off the same way. They're easy to spot even to the people who need the pruning (although whether they believe the habit is bad enough to need the pruning is another problem). But the ones I wonder about are the "perfectly good" branches that need cutting back so the plant can grow thicker and more vibrant.

These things can be like a mom no longer taking lessons to train her beautiful voice because it's taking away from her most important responsibilities - husband and children. It's not that her voice isn't a God-given gift, or that the pleasure in singing is a sort of diseased branch. Cutting out this nice green branch will just make some of the straggly ones in the heart of the bush get a whole lot thicker and healthier.

A lot of times we have a tough time getting rid of these kinds of things from life because they seem so good. There's nothing harmful in them and they're beautiful to look at. Still, they don't fit. They need pruning just as badly as the ugly stuff like nagging or bitterness; they're probably even causing those diseases by weakening the rest of the plant. But they're an awful lot harder to spot and get rid of.

In fact, I'm convinced there's only one way you CAN do it: the same way I'm able to chop down things that already seem to be flourishing. By having a picture in my head of what the end result needs to look like and getting rid of everything that isn't helping the plant get there.