Pruning of a Silver Pear

Pruning of trees with a “weeping” habit is never as simple as pruning a “normal” tree, but it's actually not that difficult to do, it's just rather time consuming. 

 

Instead of merely shortening/removing certain branches, you have to think about the overall shape of the tree, and where the individual branches are going, and you have to remove branches and twigs carefully, one by one. 

The photo above is of the annual trim of a small, but quite mature Weeping Pear....

 

 

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“What do you gardeners do, in winter?”

 This always makes me laugh, and it's one of those questions which just never stops appearing: just yesterday, someone said to me “I suppose you're off work now, until spring.”

 

They must have realised, from the Look which I gave them, that they'd said the wrong thing, but they ploughed on, regardless: “I mean,” they said “there's nothing to do in the garden now, right?”

Wrong.

Oh, so wrong!

 

 

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I've just had a question from Paula (*waves*), about a Bay tree in a pot:

She says:

“I have inherited a bay tree lollipop growing in a pot. It's about 1.5m in height and has been neglected. The top has become quite sparse, and the tree has developed a secondary crown, so that above the crown, where several branches grow out to form the lollipop, one of the branches has become much stronger than the others, and about 20 cm higher it has formed another crown where branches grow out, and another 10-15 cm above that a third crown is already forming.

My question is, should I prune this stronger branch right back to the main crown, so that the lollipop can bush out properly? Doing this would create a hollow where that branch came out. Would I be better off just pruning the secondary crown right back to where it forms?"

 

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Epimedium: why is it so under-rated?

There are some garden plants that simply everyone has in their garden... what you might call the "usual suspects" which may sound a bit disparaging, but actually it's a compliment: it means they thrive in that particular area, are easy to grow, don't suffer from excessive pests and diseases, and are pleasing to the eye.

Then there are some which are quite rare, but usually for good reason, ie they're difficult to grow, or they're not fully hardy  (which means they need to be cossetted over the winter, which is a bit of a faff, and dispiriting if “one” accidentally forgets, and the plant in question expires in the frost...), or they're slow-growing....

 

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