How to Prune Fruit Trees and Garden Plants

Pruning is one of those techniques that can be a bit of a mystery – even to fairly experienced gardeners. What plants should you prune? How should you do it? And when? While good pruning will give you glorious roses and luscious fruit, incorrect pruning could damage or even kill valuable plants.

How to Prune

Now a new book, How to Prune (pub. Kyle Cathie, RRP ¬£19.99) by the experienced celebrity gardener John Cushnie, gives a step-by-step guide to pruning everything from clematis to raspberries. In the book John gives an introduction to the basics, such as the type of equipment you need (a sharp pruning knife with a folding blade is one essential); what to prune (look for the 3Ds – remove anything dead, diseased or damaged); and when to prune. He suggests pruning deciduous plants in the early winter when they’re dormant – except for trees of the Prunus family (such as plums, damsons and cherries) which should be pruned in summer when they’re in full leaf.

Remove Old Branches

Pruning, he says, doesn’t just promote growth. Keeping fruit trees open, by removing branches that grow towards the centre will get maximum light to the crop – and better quality fruit. Old branches will also produce fewer flowers – and that means less fruit.

Pleaching

There’s a section on hedges, which looks at topics such as how to prune a yew hedge and how you can revive an ancient hedge (should you be lucky enough to have one) – as well as suggesting good hedging species. There’s also plenty of advice on topiary and how you can clip plants such as box into neat and unusual shapes. John Cushnie also shows you how you can coppice a plant such as hazel, pollard larger trees (lime and willow are most suitable) and even goes into pleaching – which means plaiting. It’s a method of pruning that allows you to create archways or walls of greenery from the knitted branches of neighbouring trees.

The book’s illustrated with plenty of clear photographs – it’s the sort of guide you’d want to take into the garden with you as you go to work on your roses. The section on roses is particularly detailed, and covers the different techniques required for ramblers, climbers, standards and bush roses.

Pruning Fruit Trees

How to Prune also has a useful section on fruit, which goes into details on rootstock (of interest to more experienced ‘grow your own’ gardeners), the pruning and training of fruit trees, and methods of getting the best out of vines (prune hard in winter, they love it). It also shows you how to deal with those tricky bush and cane fruits, like blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries.

The last part of this no nonsense book is a directory. This tells you the specific times of year and techniques needed for over 500 different plants. So whether you’ve got a Strawberry tree, a redcurrant bush or a honeysuckle you should be able to prune it with confidence.