In the fall, our lawns, trees, flowers and shrubs begin to withdraw and prepare for cold temperatures and sparse nutrition. If you have a vegetable garden, you probably wait until the last possible moment to harvest, and then pull up all those plants in preparation for next year.
Maybe you’ll even plant some garlic in the turned over dirt. And you’ll clear summer chairs and planters off the lawn to give the grass space to hibernate quietly under the snow until spring. But should you be doing something with your trees, shrubs and perennials that lose their leaves and stand spindly and bare in your yard all winter? Maybe. Maybe not.
Pruning by definition means to trim and remove superfluous twigs, branches or roots, and to rid or clear of anything undesirable. Before you take clippers to your shrubs or a saw to your trees, know what you want to accomplish with your pruning. Typically, the goals of effective and knowledgeable pruning are three-fold: plant health, landscape aesthetics and risk reduction. In the end, our built environment landscapes are there for selfish reasons, for us to enjoy. If we want to continue to reap that benefit, we must care for them.
A healthy plant is a fruitful and verdant plant, but nothing in your landscape is immune to insects and diseases. It is important to remove any dead or diseased parts of a plant so it doesn’t spread to others.
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A healthy plant is also a beautiful one – aesthetics are improved with health, but sometimes, we want more than health. Sculpting and trimming for directional growth can mold your landscape into a more practical yet eye-pleasing version of itself, with unexpected results. We have a spindly red currant bush at the end of our driveway that grows into the path of our car. Last year, I cut back quite a few of the east-growing branches. It later returned with filled-out foliage and a myriad of tiny red ochre fruits, all growing in a more westerly direction.
Sometimes trees and shrubs become a liability in the landscape, rubbing against paint, hanging precariously over structures or growing closely to utility wires. These should be judiciously pruned, keeping the structure of the tree or plant in mind. The way trees grow may also present risks. For example, bark may grow where two large branches meet, rather than sound wood, which makes the attachment weak and vulnerable to failure. And very large, dead branches can break out of a tree through natural shedding and cause damage to lawns, other plants and even your home.
Final word of advice: You may be tempted to cut back brown, ugly or dying branches and foliage in the fall, but I encourage you to have a little patience and wait until spring. The fewer frosts after pruning, the better, especially if the roots or “crowns” are exposed. Besides, those seed pods and brown textures can create a pleasing winter aesthetic when there isn’t much else happening in your landscape. Of course, you can always seek the skills and advice of a certified arborist who has the experience and knowledge to make your landscape better than you even thought it could be, for today, tomorrow and the years to come. N
By S. Michal Bennett
As Featured In: Summer/Fall 2021