Weeping Pear: can they be reduced in height?

I've written about the intricacies of managing a small Weeping Pear a few times, and today I had an interesting follow-up question:

"I planted a weeping pear 20 years ago in my London front garden.  It is now too big for me to reach the higher branches and I need to get a pro in to do it for me. I'm terrified of finding someone who doesn't know how to prune it this way, having seen some mushroom style pruning that I really don't want... any advice?"

This is a very real problem, and to illustrate it, here's a photo from my "Crimes Against Horticulture" folder, left.

This belongs to a lady for whom I work a few times a year: I turned up one day to do the autumn clearance of perennials, to find that her beautiful Weeping Pear had been slaughtered by "the bloke who cuts the grass".

Not a proper gardener, then.

He had, as you can see, pudding-bowled it.

The best you can say - with gritted teeth - is that it is at least neat and tidy, and it is smaller than it was. 

Personally I think it looks awful: some plants look good clipped into shape - Box, comes to mind. Or Yew.

But the whole point of a Weeping tree, whether it be Pear, or Willow, or anything else (you can get weeping Beech, and Ash, amongst others), is to enjoy the waterfall effect of the weeping foliage.

Not to run the hedgetrimmers over it and turn it into a mushroom.

How to avoid this sort of disaster? When you make an enquiry, with a gardener, or an arborist, ask them what tools they will use to do the job. If they say hedgetrimmer, put the phone down. In fact, if they say anything other than "hand tools and a ladder", put the phone down. 

When we (me and my arborist buddy) do Weeping Pears, we use no power tools at all: we use long-reach hand tools - "secateurs on a stick", as we sometimes say. One of us works from the ground, while the other one goes up the ladder, and that way we can ensure that we keep the tree balanced - there is a lot of conversation between us, of the "up a bit, left a bit, yes, that one," type.

The routine for these larger Weeping trees is exactly the same as in the article - first you get out the Three Ds - Dead, Diseased and Damaged.

This entails a lot of work inside the canopy: we put the ladder up very close to the trunk, and sometimes we actually climb up inside the tree, in order to get to the dead material, and there is usually a surprisingly large amount of it.  Often, the Client will ask us what we are doing, as they expect us to prune the outside first, and they wonder why we are taking so long to get going - until they notice the large pile of dead wood under the tree!

This is always an issue with "weeping" trees - the outside branches are leafy and healthy, because they get the sun, whereas the inner canopy dies off but, unlike a normal tree, these dead branches are hidden from view by the "umbrella" of the canopy. 

However, dead material is bad, because it rots, and the rot can spread to the healthy branches: also, dead branches tend to drop out of the tree at inopportune moments, so it's always best to get rid of all the dead stuff, from time to time. 

Having cleaned out the canopy, we then  start on the outside, having already looked at it from all sides, and agreed with the Client as to how much they want taken off. Usually it's a simple case of removing the upward-sprouting growth, to take it back to the height it was last year: and often we need to remove a couple of larger branches to return to a more balanced shape, if it has been growing more on one side than the other. Which is often the case.

When dealing with small ones, I like to keep the branches at least a foot clear of the ground, so that the foliage can swing in the breeze, rather than laying limply on the ground. 

With larger trees, I like to have the lower canopy sufficiently high for the owner to be able to mow underneath it without getting their eyes poked out.

You might be wondering what happened to the pudding-basin tree: well, here it is

 Three years later, it was just starting to regain the weeping form.

So you can see that it's not a total disaster, if you let someone loose with the hedgetrimmers: but it will take three years to grow back.

In fact, it was the following year before we felt that it was ready for some proper pruning: and it has been "properly" pruned every year since then, and it's now lush and shapely once more.

And, to get back to the original question, finding someone who will do it properly will mean asking a few direct questions, and stating categorically that you don't want it turned into topiary.

And the advanced answer is that, once you find that person, you can ask them if they think it is possible to lower the overall height of the tree. This will mean them selectively cutting out, carefully, some of the uppermost large branches. 

But be warned, because most Weeping Pear are grafted trees, they will have to leave a stub of the pruned branch, otherwise the new growth might not be weeping - if they cut into the graft area, they might prompt some dormant buds, from the non-weeping rootstock tree, into action. This means that it's better to cut to a point where there is a downward-growing branch.

Oh dear, so difficult to explain in words... let's try a simplified cartoon.

 Here's a very simplified weeping tree, and the red line shows the total overall height.

The highest point is on the branch to the left, so that's the one we want to reduce. 

We could cut it off just where it joins the trunk, couldn't we: the black line represents where to cut - approximately! (I'm not too good at this image manipulation lark...)

 But oh, that leaves it rather unbalanced.

Yes, it will regrow, but it will take a couple of years to fill in that gap.

Obviously, in real life, there will be more than one main branch, it won't be quite as stark as this, but you see the point - taking off a major limb can drastically change the shape of the tree, and can leave it unbalanced, which might lead to problems later on.

A better compromise, then, is to reduce that left-hand branch, rather than removing the whole thing:

Again, the black line is the approximate cut point - just above a good strong downward-growing branch.

The blue line shows that you have made a reduction in height overall, but if you look at the centre of the tree, you can see that the highest point is now that middle branch - so we have retained some of the left-hand branch, but have still gained the same reduction in height as if we had removed the entirety of the left-hand branch.

This is a much better way to do it: the tree is less unbalanced, we have lowered the height, but there isn't such a hole in the canopy on the left hand side.

 As a finishing touch, I would also remove just a little from the far right-hand side, to make a better overall shape.

And I'd adjust the lengths of a couple of the longer branches - again, just a little, enough to change it from being top-heavy on the right, to being slightly shorter on the right.

That's quite a long answer to a short question, but as you can see, when dealing with ornamental trees, it's not just a case of hacking off a couple of branches.

Well, not if you want to end up with something which looks like a real tree, not a poor butchered thing! 

Hopefully this has answered the question - a) ask lots of questions of any professionals you are considering calling in:  b) make it very plain to them, how you want it done, and how you absolutely do NOT want it done: and c) yes, the overall height can be reduced, in order to bring it back within your own reach, and you will then be able to prune it yourself for another few years.

 

 

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When it is a "good" time to plant out new purchases?

I had this question the other day, from someone who had lost a lot of plants over the winter, and was wanting to know when it would be safe to replant.

Well, there's a question! As I write, we're just leaving the wettest March since records began, and every single one of "my" gardens has casualties to show for it.

Most of the time, I am still recommending that we give them a couple more weeks before pulling them out, just in case they may still recover: but in some cases, such a high proportion of the plant has already died that, even if the lower parts were to recover, it would take a long time for it to become a "nice" shaped plant again, so I think that a lot of them are going to have to be replaced. 

Apparently the worst of the wet weather is over now, although the forecast says more frost for early next week... so I really can't suggest a "good" time to replant! 

Personally, I would buy the plants as and when I find them available, and keep them at home, still in their pots, for a couple of weeks. That way, you can check that they are properly watered by lifting the pot and feeling the weight of it (once it's planted, you don't know how wet the soil is) and the pots can be positioned in a protected spot until you are ready to plant them. 

If frost is forecast, you can cover them with horticultural fleece, or put them in a covered area overnight: and it gives them a chance to acclimatise to your garden before you plant them out.

A lot of people ask me if it's ok to keep a bought plant in the pot for a while: they think that, having bought it, they have to plant it out as soon as possible: but this is not the case. 

Those plants, in their plastic pots, might have been in the nursery for a couple of years before making their way to the garden centre to be sold, so they can easily survive another few days, or weeks, or longer, in their pots: as long as you keep them watered. 

Nurseries have spray irrigation systems, so everything gets watered every day, and if you can ensure that your plants-in-pots are kept adequately watered, then they should be fine for as long as it takes you to get around to planting them in the garden, 

So there's the answer: there is no particular "good" time to plant bought plants into the garden, other than "not in freezing weather", when the ground is too hard to plant them properly.

Generally, it makes sense to get them in the ground as soon as you can, because that is the natural environment for them, and being in plastic pots can be stressful for the plant, and means that you have to keep an eye on them, to ensure they are properly watered.

But if weather conditions are dubious, or if you just don't have time, it's perfectly ok to leave them in their pots until things improve, or until you are ready.

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Spanish Bluebells: How to get rid of them, and why.

Yes, it's that time again:

The snowdrops were lovely, the daffodils are just starting to go over,  and look out, here come the first signs of bluebells.

In this case, Spanish bluebells, not our native ones.

And that means it's time to dig them out!

Why?

Because a lot of my Clients are concerned about the dangers of Spanish Bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica, or Scilla hispanica) invading and hybridising with our English Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta). 

This is a valid concern: if you want to know more about it, check out my Field Guide on the subject: 

 

Even if you are not particularly bothered about the risk to our English bluebells, then it is still a concern to many gardeners, that Spanish bluebells are rampant spreaders, and will quickly smother any other spring flowers in their area.

How to remove them? Just dig them out: push in the fork, vertically, as close to the clump as you can get, then lever them out.

Normally, when digging out bulbs, I knock off the soil, to avoid removing good soil from the garden.

However,  when trying to get rid of something (as opposed to merely moving it), I am a bit cautious, and don't handle them too roughly, in order to avoid any small bulbs falling out of the clump and ending up back in the soil.

This is what bluebell bulbs look like:

They are fleshy, and white, not firm and brown, like Tulips or Daffodils.

The larger ones are what you might call bulb-shaped, but smaller ones are long,  and look more like weird roots: they do this just to confuse us, in the hopes that we won't realise what they are, and will anxiously re-plant them.

Be firm! Anything with fleshy, slightly squashy, white bulbs needs to be heaved out and disposed of properly.

"Proper disposal" means not putting them on the compost, because then they will assume that they have been planted, and will grow, flowers, set seed, and contaminate all the compost.

It also means not fly tipping them - don't dump them over the back fence into that handy piece of waste ground: that's how they escape, and spread. 

Put them into your Green Waste wheelie bin if you have one, because the municipal processing will render them harmless. If not, put them into your kitchen waste bin: they will then be processed along with your other vegetable waste, and will do some good.

If you are really particular, then yes, you can cut off the leaves and compost them, as long as you are careful not to get any of the bulbs into the compost.

Talking of being careful, always handle bluebells with gloves,  because all parts of bluebells are toxic - that is, the leaves, the bulbs, and the flowers.

They won't exactly kill  you on sight - you'd have to eat an awful lot of them for them to do you much harm, and most of the bluebell poisoning cases are horses or cattle, who have eaten the foliage.

However, the sap is very sticky stuff (it used to be used to glue feathers to arrows, would you believe) and it can be an irritant to the skin.

Another perfectly good reason for digging them out! 

 

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Tree Peony: last chance to tidy them up!

There are times when jobs which "should" have been done in autumn are, for a variety of reasons, not done.

Tidying up the Tree Peony is one of those - I wrote about preliminary tidying back in November, and sure enough, earlier this week I encountered a Tree Peony which had been missed.

Here it is - left - and you can see that the flower buds are already forming: it's going to be dark red, folks!

As usual, I'd been working on it for ten minutes before I remembered to take the "before" photo....

...so I hastily took a snap of the next section.

That's what it looked like beforehand - all the dead brown stalks from last year's leaves, along with the dead brown lumpy bits which were last year's flowers.

So it's off with the gloves, and out with the secateurs, and time to gently and carefully pull or snip away all that dead material.

Why "off with the gloves"?

Because I don't want to damage those burgeoning flower buds, and it's easier to avoid damage without thick gloves on. That's why! 

I will always be wearing gloves when grovelling around in the soil, because of the constant presence of sharp stones, broken glass, and animal poo: but for these "up-in-the-air" jobs, it's fine to do them bare hand. (As long as it's not a freezing cold morning, of course!)

It looks like a horrible mass, but actually it's quite easy to remove the dead material in layers, starting at the top, just under the new leaves and the flower bud. Then I work my way down the stem, snipping off any dead tips: they are grey and lifeless, and the good thing about doing it now - silver linings, and all that - is that it's very, very easy to spot dead parts!

And here we are, most of the dead stuff has been removed, and the plant looks so much better.

Just a couple more lower bits to remove, and we're done.

Having cleared away the dead foliage, I can now look within the plant and spot any dead branches: Tree Peony, especially well-established ones such as the one here,  often have entire upright stems which have died off, but which were invisible amongst the general stems.

So now is a good time to cut them out, now that they are so easy to spot (ie they are bare and grey, with not a leaf, bud, or sign of life to be seen on them). In fact, sometimes they detach themselves at ground level, they are that dead, so it's just a matter of lifting them out from the centre of the bush, without damaging any of the buds.

If they don't pull out, then they can usually be dealt with by just cutting them with secateurs - or with a pruning saw, if they are very stout.

So why is this the "last chance" to tidy them up?

Answer: because the flowers are forming, and the longer you leave it, the more likely that removing the dead material will cause you to inadvertently damage the flower buds.

The whole thing now looks a great deal better: the air can circulate freely, which reduces the possibility of mould, mildew, and other forms of rot: and we can look forward to a fantastic display of flowers, in just a little while!

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Salvia - suffering through a wet spring.

Oh dear, I've had a lot of people asking about their Salvia: we've had a horrible winter, and a miserable wet spring, and the Salvia are suffering.

But, as per my earlier article about micro climates, it's most annoying when most of them just die, but some of them don't.

This makes the owner wonder if it was something they did wrong - but no, the answer is just that an apparently identical plant will react differently, in different parts of your garden, and the "difference" can be a matter of just a couple of feet.

Here's an example: 

This, left, is a row of five large pots (and one odd small one, not sure what he's doing there) each containing a Salvia. 

There is an irrigation system in place, and last summer they were a glorious row.

But now, four out of five are dead.

Quite, quite dead.

However, the one at the far end, away from us....

.. is showing signs of life.

This is almost more annoying than if all five of them had died!

So why did just this one survive, albeit not very well?

They all had the same water, the same soil, they were bought at the same time: but this is the one on the end, and it must have been just a little bit more sheltered than the others. 

It might have received just a little bit more sunlight, being nearest to the opening in the wall, so it might have been just a bit more successful last year, which might have helped it to survive the winter.

Who knows.

What we do know, however, is that the micro climate can make a huge difference, and that it's not our "fault" if only one plant survives.

So what do we do with them?

The temptation is to trim the dead parts off this one in the hopes that it will recover: however, I have recommended that the Client buys five new ones, because this one will probably take months, if ever, to recover properly, and it definitely won't match the other four. This is important when they are standing in a row like this: if the plants were dotted around in a bed, it wouldn't matter if one were larger or smaller than the others.

But when they are on display like this, well, homogeny is required!

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Hydrangea: why we don't prune them in March!

It is best, in the UK, not to prune bush Hydrangeas until winter is well and truly over: the books all say "prune in late winter/early spring" , which would usually mean Feb/March: but the books also say "not until the last frosts have finished," which can be as late as May.

For many years I worked for a lady with a large amount of Hydrangeas (part of her garden was actually called the "Hydrangea Walk"!) , and she would never let me cut them back until the end of May.

Personally, I prefer to prune them a little earlier than that: rather than following the calender, I assess how much they've grown, how advanced the buds are, how much dead material there is, how healthy the particular plant is, and of course the weather: what sort of weather we've had, and what sort of weather is forecast.

The problem is that if you leave it too long, until they have started to sprout, then it's tricky to cut out the dead stems without damaging the tender new leaves. But if you cut them too early, they might be damaged again, by a late frost....

Generally speaking, then, I don't have a set date: but I would never prune them as early as March.

Rather, I tend to put off pruning them until towards the end of April.  Having said that, sometimes the owner wants them cut back earlier because they are sick and tired of looking at the dead brown flowers from last year, in which case I would compromise: I would shorten the stems with dead brown buds, but I would leave at least one set of dead ones, rather than cutting right back to the live ones.

Garden owners often ask what I do with my own Hydrangeas:  personally, I nip off those dead brown flowers just as soon as they start looking tatty, which can be in autumn: I don't subscribe to this notion that leaving the dead flowers in place protects the buds lower down.

However, I most certainly do subscribe to the notion that frost damage occurs from the tips inwards: and that means that I may nip off the dead flowers, but I leave the stems long. Although I will often just "neaten up" the outline, if some of the branches are notably longer than others... I like things to be neat.

Here's an example - left - of how I like to prune Hydrangeas in late autumn. This is a large Hydrangea (not mine, this is one of "my" gardens but not my own garden), and this is what I do to it every year in autumn. 

This photo was taken in mid December: I stopped part-way through to take this photo, to illustrate how  much material I am removing. You can see that I'm cutting off the dead brown flowers, and a few inches of the stem as well - but I am leaving the stems very long, over the majority of the bush.

I have cut the lowest branches back a lot further, because in this particular case, it's a large, fast-growing bush, and the lower branches invade the path, the drive, and the lawn: and it is the top-most branches which tend to take the brunt of any frost damage.

So that's my regime: cut off dead flowers as and when they start to look tatty, by all means neaten up the outline, but don't cut the whole bush back until well into April.

Here's an illustration of what happens when the frost hits:

Here you can see a stem of Hydrangea, the root is to the left, the tip is to the right: and those black things are dead, frost-bitten buds.

This was taken in the first week of April, and we have had some hard frosts in the past week or so.

All the buds to the right, ie towards the tip, were similarly ruined.

And here - left - I am moving along the stem to the left, inwards towards the centre of the plant: and you can now see that there are dead brown/black buds in the middle of my hand, but further to the left, there are some nice green buds.

These are the ones which will sprout properly: but I won't cut the stems back yet, because we may well have yet more cold weather, and if I were to cut off all the dead brown areas now, it would expose those nice green ones to the next frost which comes along.

So, as the weather is still cold overnight, this particular Hydrangea did not get any pruning at all.

I will return to it in a couple of weeks, and re-assess it.

So that, in a nutshell, is why we don't prune them in March, but we wait... just a wee bit longer!

 

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Slugs and Snails

I've often wished there were just one word for these two garden menaces - most of the time, when I refer to them, it's either to do with the damage which they cause, or how to kill them, in which case whatever I say applies equally to both. 

(This - left - is the only type of snail I like to see in "my" gardens...)
 

But every time, I have to laboriously type “slugs-and-snails”. 

It's not just me being a lazy typist: it makes an article less readable if it has a lot of repetition in it, and by the time you've read “slugs-and-snails” four times, well, you'd be getting a bit tired of it, too. 

 Did you know that in Danish, for example, they don't have two words for “slugs-and-snails”, just the one? They are all “snegl”. I am extremely envious of this, although I would just say that the word “snegl” is a little too close to “snuggle” for comfort, especially in relation to “slugs-and-snails”. 

And apparently in Dutch, they call them all slak/slakken, although apparently there is a secondary distinction between 'huisjesslakken' and 'naaktslakken', which translates roughly as house snails versus nude snails, and we have to assume that nude snails are what we call slugs, while house snails are "proper" snail, sho carry their house around on their back.

Or, possibly, live in our houses? No, surely not.

Wouldn't the English language, and gardening in particular, be so much better with just one word to cover these two items? 

Of course, there is the scientific word of “gastropod” but frankly, that sounds like some sort of pop-up wine bar that serves food - and please don't tell me that snails are edible, otherwise you will have me heaving over my keyboard. 

Perhaps we should invent a word of our own? According to one of my favourite books, The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd (he of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame, and he who invented QI), there are plenty of words “idly loafing around on signposts” which might as well be put to use. 

How about Sliverands? Slyne? (a bit like “kine”, maybe that's the medieval word for them?) Smails? Snitters?

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How to plant something - properly!

There comes a point, in the life of every professional person, when they come across an example of something done by an "amateur", in their professional field, which makes them do that thing where you want to laugh, but you don't want to embarrass the "amateur", so you try to suppress it, and it comes out as a sort of snort, through the nose.

I did that, the other day.

And what, you might be wondering, was the cause of all this suppressed merriment, on my part?

Exhibit A, m'lud:

In case you can't quite make up what that is, it's a perennial, cut down for winter, in a coir pot: which has been planted about 2" proud of soil level.

Oops!

*snorts through nose*

So what's so bad about this?

And, "what's a coir pot?" I hear someone at the back asking.

Well, first question first: plants are "supposed" to be planted out in such a way that the soil level within their pot, becomes level with the soil level in the bed or border.

Not sticking out above soil level.

Why? Because that margin of 2" contains the most active water-absorbing roots. Plants create deeper roots, often for stability rather than for feeding, but the roots nearest to the surface are the ones which gets first dibs on fresh rainfall, fresh application of feed or fertiliser, so they are quite important.

By digging an insufficiently deep hole - which is basically the problem here - this top layer of active roots are waving around in mid-air, instead of being safely tucked under the soil: and the air will dry them up and kill them.

This means that the poor plant has to start again, two inches further down, to extrude new roots into the soil.

Plus, it looks ridiculous! I mean, look at it! The tide has gone out, leaving it beached high and dry, poor thing!

If you find something like this, the only option is to dig the whole thing up, deepen the hole, and pop it back in: water it well, give it some liquid feed if it's during the growing season, and hope that it will recover.

And try not to snort through your nose, at whoever planted it...

Now let's take a look at the subject of coir pots:

Coir pots were a fad from a few years back: instead of buying your plants in a nasty plastic pot, which was not recyclable, and which were rarely re-used, some bright spark came up with the idea of making plant pots from a natural, waste material: and coir is the husk of the coconut - the hairy stuff on the outside of the hard shell. It's a waste product, obviously, as coconuts are farmed for the white "flesh" inside them, and - to a lesser extent - for the "milk". But the outer shells are thrown away.

So it was decided to try making plant pots from the coir, and promoting them as bio-degradable, the idea being that, instead of removing a plastic plant pot, you can plant the whole thing, coir pot and all, out into your garden: this means no root disturbance for the plant, and the pot will gradually rot down into nothing. 

Or at least, that's the theory. 

Here - left - is a plant which the owner asked me to lift and split, as it was getting a bit congested.

When I lifted it, look! The remains of the coir pot, still pretty much intact.

"How long ago did you plant it?" I asked. "Oh, about four years ago," came the reply.

Yes, the roots have grown through it, which is good, but it hasn't exactly bio-degraded down to nothing.

So on balance, I'm not a big fan of coir pots, and when asked to plant out new acquisitions which has been purchased in such a pot, I will wait until the owner isn't looking, then cut and peel off the coir, before planting the plant. 

As an aside, I have often wished that there was another word for "the act of putting a living plant into the ground or into a pot", other than "plant". Because "planting the plant" just looks daft... anyway...

Having removed the coir, I'll pop it onto the compost heap, although again - to be honest - I have found the remains of coir still fairly intact after a year in a compost heap, so I'm not at all convinced about their success!

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