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Trapped in the Garden: Adventures in Spring Pruning

© Carol Wallace

Pruning is one of my all-time favorite gardening activities. It makes me feel like an artist. I have heard sculptors describe the process they go through to create a statue. You start with a block of stone and then remove everything that doesn't look like a person - or whatever the final intent of the work is supposed to resemble.

Pruning is like that. You whip out your chisel - in this case your pruning shears or loppers - and start removing anything that doesn't look like an idea shrub or tree. In doing this, you are determining how that shrub or tree will grow for the season. You are determining its final shape.

Not only that, you are insuring its health. By removing the inner congested growth, you are allowing air and light to circulate through the remaining growth - which reduces the chances of mildew, black spot and other plant problems.

I seem to go into a sort of a trance when I prune. I have another mental picture here - of the painter stepping back from his easel, squinting and deciding what is needed next. That's me - leaning into my canvas, selecting a branch to remove or shorten, then stepping back to judge the effect. Eventually I end up with a work of art.

Not that this is visible to the eye right off the bat. Especially when I finish pruning the roses. In fact, they emerge looking somewhat stunted. It seemed to my husband, when we finished pruning the climbing roses on the arbors that we had done something not only drastic but also dangerous. I can't blame him, since what began as a terribly tangled jumble of clematis and long straggling rose canes - a few of which were reaching out into the garden as if to grab an unwary visitor - ended as three short, thorny canes and a few six inch vinelings. I assured him that this was what was supposed to happen.

All he did was look dubiously at the ever-growing pile of thorny branches that were piling up around the arbors.

I explained to him the three D's of pruning. Dead, Diseased and Demented. What this means is that the pruner's first job is to remove anything from the plant that is dead. Even a healthy plant will have at least a few dead twigs, or tips of branches that have died off. These are the first to go. This generally creates only a fairly small pile of debris, but you have to start somewhere. And if you are pruning roses and clematis, as we were, you can end up with quite a pile of refuse. We had major dieback on most of the roses - huge, heirloom type shrubs and climbers. So we had a huge tangle of thorny canes to deal with.