| The prerequisite for getting the best performance | | | | season, by simply clipping back shoots that burst |
| from your landscaping shrubs and bushes is to be | | | | forward. Usually, small quantities are removed at |
| clear about their precise design role they are to | | | | any one time, so the plants should not be |
| play in the garden. Are they to serve as a | | | | adversely affected. A hedge trimmer is the |
| screen, a backdrop to some special feature, are | | | | easiest and quickest method for the job, but the |
| they to be grown to provide color and fruit, or is | | | | natural look of the shrubs can be diminished if |
| a particular specimen to be given a special role | | | | right angles are created by the trimming. Regularly |
| such as being limbed up into a small tree, or | | | | removing small quantities of tissue, prevents the |
| perhaps grown horizontally on a wall, in the | | | | need for a much heavier pruning operation, which |
| espalier fashion? | | | | is sometimes necessary when the bush has |
| Following that, successfully achieving the desired | | | | become loose, open, woody and top-heavy. |
| shape or form of the shrubs is a matter of | | | | Some landscape shrubs of course, possess an |
| choosing the appropriate form of pruning. Pruning | | | | attractive form naturally. With such plants, the |
| is the most important of the various horticultural | | | | constant shortening of branches and shoots spoils |
| tasks, because of all the different plant types that | | | | the natural look of the plant. Examples include |
| make up the garden composition, shrubs and | | | | Abelia grandiflora, Acalypha wilkensiana, Nandina |
| bushes usually require the most intervention with | | | | domestica, and Plumeria rubra In such cases, |
| their natural growth habit. | | | | selected branches, invariably old ones, should be |
| The most obvious example of this intervention is | | | | cut to the ground, creating space for new shoots |
| with trimmed hedges or with some other form of | | | | at the base of the plant to develop. Growing |
| topiary. Less obvious, but no less critical, is the | | | | shrubs is very much a matter of granting |
| need for the regular clipping and pruning of those | | | | preference to the young over the old! |
| shrubs that are grown as an informal, natural | | | | The right season for pruning to rejuvenate |
| screen. If the function of such plants is to be the | | | | individual branches or the whole bush, depends on |
| "wall" of the garden, that is to be green and full | | | | whether the species is deciduous or evergreen, |
| from the ground upwards, then pruning is | | | | sensitive or hardy to cold. Deciduous plants from |
| necessary to ensure compact growth. Left to | | | | cold climates should be pruned in the winter, their |
| their own devices, most shrubs lose this compact, | | | | dormant season, but not in the spring. Evergreens |
| full growth, in time tending to grow like trees - | | | | and non-hardy species on the other hand, should |
| woody up to at least eye level, and only green | | | | not be touched until all possibility of frosts has |
| and leafy on top. | | | | passed. |
| It is easy to prevent this during the growing | | | | |