Best of The Simple Things
LOSE YOURSELF IN THE SOOTHING, REPETITIVE ACT OF PRUNING AND YOU’LL NOT ONLY IMPROVE YOUR PLANTS, BUT PRACTISE A LITTLE MINDFULNESS WHILE YOU’RE AT IT
There’s something magical about the midwinter garden, especially when it’s edged with frost. An ideal environment for some restorative post-festivities solitude, its bare, pared-back appearance provides peace and space at the start of a new year. One item on the to-do list of greenfingered types in this hibernal habitat (and an ideal medium for mindfulness) is the calming act of pruning. Concentrating on the particular treatment required for each needy specimen in your plot will ensure you lose yourself entirely as you carry out the job in hand, banishing all other thoughts. Pruning trains both your plants and your brain.
Snipping away with your secateurs is a creative, nurturing endeavour masquerading as horticultural anarchy. Taking a few rules into account, you can go all Edward Scissorhands on shrubs and trees safe in the knowledge that you’re investing in the health and beauty of your garden. The fact that you may well be followed around by a tirelessly cheerful robin adds more appeal to this most pleasant of pastimes, which, once you begin, is likely to have you hooked.
Pruning is an important part of your relationship with a plant, encouraging it to reach its potential by helping to prevent disease, promoting the best possible fruit or flowers and lengthening its life. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed a rose bush’s blooms, deadheaded those you didn’t pick and even harvested its health-giving hips? Well, now it’s time to show it some tough love by removing old, unproductive stems and editing its framework of branches to nurture a fine, healthy specimen. It will repay your kindness in the year ahead.
Unlike cutting back, which is shaping a plant for the benefit of other vegetation or you, pruning is all about keeping a check on the size, habit, wellbeing and appearance of the plant in question. Until you’ve seen the results, making changes to your plants can feel risky, but don’t be daunted – as with any new task, taking it step by step will demystify the process.
First, assess your subject and decide whether light (cutting off up to a third of growth), moderate (around half) or hard pruning (the most radical: taking it back to as far as ground level) is called for. Bear in mind the curious truth that by reducing the strongest growers too greatly, you’re likely to give them even more vigour, while weaker plants require drastic action if they are to flourish. Of course, timing is everything: as a rule of thumb, plants that bloom in spring should be pruned immediately afterwards whereas summer-flowerers can be tackled in winter or early spring (see opposite).
Next, identify the three Ds – dead, damaged and diseased wood – and remove those parts affected. Look for branches that cross closely and may rub against each other, as they could not only wear away bark but prevent air circulation, which is vital for good health. Before removing any sections, ensure that your tools are sharp and your cut is clean (this speeds up the healing process) and that, if there is a bud, you cut just above it. Pruning at an angle will encourage rainwater run-off and stop the exposed area being a breeding ground for disease.
Work your way around the garden and, when the job is done, either dispose of woody cuttings in whatever way your local council sees fit, use a shredder to make a mulch or compostable mix, or celebrate your new-found skills by having a bonfire, and invite friends along to brighten a long winter’s evening.
“You lose yourself entirely as you carry out the job in hand, banishing all other thoughts”