Shrubs
& Trees. Best care practices. articles on the care of your shrubs
and trees. Shrub pruning in particular is
often done incorrectly, so I've included loads of tips on that
here.
Shrubs and trees are the irreplaceable
backbones of any garden's design. Investing
time and education in their correct care pays back handsomely with a
garden that increases in beauty and value over time rather than
needing renovation or replacement every few years.
Plants of all kinds are one of the few things that increase
in value as they get olderother than ourselves of
course!). We tend to forget just how valuable a
healthy mature shrub or small tree is - value of both money and
meaning. In this disposable era we're in, many new gardeners
assume that plants, just like most of the things we buy, need
replacing when they get "worn out" and old, but nothing could be
further from the truth!
Coppicing.
A severe pruning technique for unique results. linkto...
Best Time for
Transplanting Trees & Shrubs. linkto...
Buying large specimen plants to start out with, still won't give you
a plant that has been allowed to achieve it's full potential beauty,
since it's usually been pruned and chopped tight to fit into a garden
center setting. Only good pruning and care practices, along with
the most important ingredient - TIME,
will give you the beautiful specimen you saw in a picture somewhere
that inspired you to choose it for your garden in the first
place.
Pruning is the fine art of gardening. When
you come to understand the principles at work in how all woody plants
grow, you can achieve anything from a miniature bonsai or full size
topiary, to a specimen tree with a unique sculpture. You
can't purchase a fixed shape or size - you need to train them through
knowledgeable pruning.
I hope some of these articles will help
you along your learning curve! If you live in the
Newmarket area, you might like to attend my "Stop the Torture"
pruning workshop for some hands-on learning. See the
"Classes" page for details. Evelyn Wolf
... an excerpt from my "Dirty Knees" newsletter I used to
email, January 2012. E.
COPPICING.
This severe pruning technique creates unique effects to use in
your garden's design.
... when a branch is cut, it's stimulated into more growth than
it otherwise would put out. We tend to think of pruning as
removing growth, but the actual result is MORE growth. Pruning is
the art of controlling where on the plant more growth will
happen. When pruning you need to look into the future and
"see" the growth results of each cut. Coppicing is usingthis
natural response in an extreme way.
Seeing in the minds eye what growth pattern will result from
each cut, is the tricky part of any pruning. Topiary,
espalier, pollarding, hedging, or 100 year old shrubs still vibrant
and full of flowers are just some of the many ornamental effects
that can be achieved when you work together with the 100% guarantee
that a healthy plant WILL respond in a predicable way to your
pruning cuts. Coppicing is just one of the many effects that
result from trusting in this 100% guarantee of a predictable result.
Coppicing is a particularly severe pruning technique, but it can
produce some dramatic results.
for
more topics and in-depth articles, visit our
new web site at -
www . YRgardening . ca your
LOCAL guide to all things
gardening in York Region link
to...
It is the practice of annually cutting a tree or shrub back to the
same point each year, or even all the way to the ground, to
stimulate very vigorous regrowth. It is called "pollarding"
when it's done higher in the plant to achieve a lollipop effect, and
it's called "coppicing" when it's done at the base of the plant at
ground level to achieve other desirable effects.
It is an ancient art with its roots in the practicality of producing
a renewed supply of manageably sized firewood, but has a more
ornamental role to play in our gardens. It is not a
pruning technique that's healthy for a plant, but it serves a
particular purpose - be it for firewood or a unique design
effect. If you plan to prune this way, know that you need to
also watch regularly for diseased wood that may develop because of
the unnatural growth you've forced.
Coppicing
also serves an additional purpose - as a last resort for
rejuvenating an old shrub that has grown too large or has too many
congested branches. Technically, this isn't called
coppicing, but all the same principles and plant reactions
apply. All branches are cut to the ground, then after
all the vigorous new growth has ripened, you start training what is,
in essence, a whole new plant. Select a few of the best
branches from the dozens that will sprout as a result of
coppicing, and remove the others completely. This creates a
basic framework for a renewed life. In subsequent years you
can start pruning it normally to shape it as you wish.
Another use of the coppicing technique is to stimulate lots of
fresh stem growth with intense colour. Dogwoods are a
particularly good candidate for this since their red stem colour is
brightest on new wood. Cutting them right back to the ground
each spring produces the brightest possible stem colour to shine
against the snow of the following winter in a fireworks display of
long straight branches. An established healthy Dogwood
receiving adequate moisture can grow branches 4 feet to 5 feet tall
each year when pruned this way. There's one major
caveat to remember though - this is a severe and plant weakening
pruning technique. If done every year, the shrub
will decline in health and lose it's come-back vigor, so every 3rd
year or so, leave it alone and let it grow to full size so it can
have a full compliment of leaves to soak up sunlight and feed
itself properly. (Overall, a shrub is dwarfed by regular
coppicing because of this weakening
effect - sometimes, exactly what you want!)
Another design effect on particular plants can be achieved
with coppicing. Because coppicing removes all of the growth
buds that were along all the branches you cut off, the few buds that
remain at the base of the plant receive all the energy stored in the
roots, so those few buds grow at a phenomenally strong and fast
rate. Long, straight and strong branches are the result
- an ornamental feature you can put to unique advantage. The most
striking example is with Cotinus coggygria, (a.k.a.Purple
Smoke Bush). When coppiced early each spring,
their branches grow 5 feet tall at least - all perfectly straight
and upwards, full of huge purple leaves. Long purple
wands swaying in the breeze. Beautiful! Another
shrub this long straight wand effect looks great on is Salix purpurea,
(a.k.a. Purpleosier Willow). Again - the
reminder though - the plant will be dwarfed, but this can be a good
thing if you want to achieve this particular effect and keep it
small to mix in with your smaller garden rather than letting it grow
to it's mature 8' - 10' size.
There are many other pruning techniques to
learn and, as mentioned above, the starting point is to trust in the
100% guarantee that a healthy shrub will respond predictably to a
pruning cut. How vigorously it responds depends on its
typical growth rate, the health of the plant, how much you've pruned
away at that moment, and whether it has enough moisture to support
fast growth.
Coppicing is best done in early spring or very late fall since
you're not concerned about flowering, but in stem colour or the long
straight wand effect instead. I can't stress enough
though just how much this technique is torturous to a shrub or
tree, but in the spirit of "the essence of gardening is control",
you can achieve particular effects that are unique and beautiful
with knowledgeable pruning.
Experiment with this strong pruning approach to discover some unique
effects, but only on healthy established plants.
Correct
Planting of New Trees & Shrubs. Q.
My friend and I both bought a cut-leaf Japanese maple last summer, but
hers is doing fine while mine seems to be struggling. They were both
similarly healthy when purchased.
A. It isn't
easy to diagnose plant problems from a distance of course, but the
difference between the current state of health of your shrub, as
opposed your friend's, is probably the result of improper original
planting.
I'll assume you watered well at planting time, but watering after
planting often won't penetrate the tightly congested root ball of a
new plant that has spent the first few years of life in a pot.
Even though nursery grown plants are healthy and treated well, life in
the confined space of a pot is not a Even
"drought tolerant" plants need lots of watering help for the first
2-3 months after planting. Until they regrow the fine root
hairs that got damaged at planting time, they're extremely
vulnerable to collapse since they can't replace leaf moisture fast
enough. Same is true for even dry loving plants. For
just a bit of time, they need your help. (read "This Year
We'll Be Ready" on the Drought Tolerant Gardening page. link
to) Evelynhappy one, especially for woody
plants. Roots on a sizeable container grown plant can become so
congested as they circle around the inside of the pot that they can
become impenetrable - even by water. If these roots are not
untangled at planting time to let soil, water and air reach all of the
roots, only the outer roots will ever be in contact with water and the
plant will struggle for life until it can establish a whole new
network of roots outside of this congested ball. They can suffer
a lot of damage during this period and sometimes will not make it
through. (This sounds like what your young tree might be going
through now.)
If your tree or shrub does makes it through this phase, a different
problem can emerge much later in the plant's life if root that circled
the inside of the pot weren't untangled at planting. In a
worst case scenario, these roots will grow in girth to literally
strangle the tree or shrub's trunk base, eventually cutting off the
flow of water and nutrients. It isn't unusual for these
"girdling roots" to be the cause of poor health or death of long
established trees.
(To prevent this problem in a mature plant, at year 5 or 6-ish,
when the tree has established a good new root system, cut any roots
that appear to circle the trunk at the base. Scratch 5 or 6
inches down around the trunk and hunt for any offenders. Even if
you find a large circling root, the stress caused by cutting it will
set the plant back a bit, but it will recover. It won't be able
to recover from a girdling root that's allowed to stay and strangle
the tree in the future though.)
The correct method for planting all new plants, especially woody
plants is as follows. ~Prepare a hole at least twice
the diameter of the pot or root ball, but no deeper. ~ Fill the hole with water and let
it drain to thoroughly soak the soil. ~Remove the plant from its pot (in
the shade!!!) and put it in a bucket of water to soak and loosen
the root ball. If the root ball is very congested, the jet spray
of your watering hose will help force a break in the armor. ~ Separate and untangle larger roots,
especially any that are circling, even if you have to cut them to do
so. Dunk them in the water again to moisten and loosen them
further. ~ Spread roots out in the hole as much as you
can without causing damage, positioning the crown at the correct level
(no deeper than it was in the pot) then add soil, firming as
you go. ~ Leave a bit of a trench around
the base to allow water to pool and soak through the root area, and
drench thoroughly again to help soil particles settle close to roots. ~ Leave the trench in place
for a few days and drench daily for at least 4 €“5 days.
An added guarantee of success would be to provide shade for these few
days. I use an old bed linen to just drape over the plant.
This is especially helpful if you're planting during the warmer days
of summer rather than spring. ~ After a few weeks you should see
the plant revive and begin to put out new growth. This is the
time to fertilize with a water soluble booster applied at half
strength - again, really well watered in - not just in the top few
inches. However, if you're planting in the fall you really
don't want vigorous top growth but you do want roots well established
and moist, so water well right through until just before ground freeze
up in December, but don't fertilize until spring.
As you ' ve experienced, correct planting can mean
the difference between life and death for any shrub,
let alone a sensitive cut-leaf maple. For now, don't fertilize, water
well, and cross your fingers!
Q.I hear conflicting advice about
when it's best to transplant. I have a healthy, three year
old, Burning Bush that I'd like to move. When is the best
time? A. The best time to move most plants is
mid to late fall. In other words, NOW!
At this time of year all perennial plants, whether they are herbaceous
(hosta, daylily, etc.) or woody perennials (shrubs & trees), have
shut down their feeding systems and are entering dormancy. (This
is what the fall colours are about. Plants are draining the
last of the chlorophyll from their leaves and have stopped producing
more.)
When plants are in their dormant period they undergo the least amount
of shock when transplanted. Think of it as though they are in a
deep sleep. They can be moved around without even noticing it,
and simply wake up in a new "bed". (It isn't quite that
simple though since their roots have been damaged while
transplanting.)
Dig up your shrub, getting as much of the root ball as possible.
For very large shrubs or young trees with deep roots, dig a trench
around it that's more or less in line with the outer edge of the top
growth. If your soil is heavy this may be a real chore, but what
I often do is get an old bed linen or tarp and lift or roll the root
ball on to it to drag it to the new spot - or if you have a dolly,
that'll work too to move it. If your soil is lose and falls away
from the roots, don't worry about it. This is actually a better
situation since you have a chance to spread out the roots in the new
planting hole where it will be in direct contact with fresh
soil. Just be sure to not expose bare roots to sun or
wind. I usually hose down roots and cover them quickly with
something until they are safe in the ground again.
Obviously, do your best to damage as few of the main roots
as possible, but this is why transplanting in dormancy is
best. It's inevitable that there will be damage
to roots, but during dormancy this doesn't cause stress since it
doesn't have any leaves to support right now and it's not in an active
growth period where water uptake is needed. It will have a
chance both now and in early spring to grow more feeder roots before
growing time and the heat of summer comes. If
there was a lot of damage to roots during the move,
in very early spring prune away about 1/3 of the branches to reduce
the amount of draw on the damaged roots, until they have a chance to
recover with new ones.
The most important part of transplanting any woody plant at
any time is water. Since woody plants have
above ground parts that are constantly exposed to sun and wind, the
stress on them is much greater than with herbaceous perennials.
After transplanting, leave your hose on a slow steady dribble and
really soak the root zone. It may sound crazy, but a thorough
watering again in December, just before the ground freezes, will
ensure that when early spring arrives the damaged roots will have a
ready supply of the moisture needed to put out new growth and repair
roots.
When spring fully arrives, make sure extra care is given to watering
the shrub well again. It may be a plant you've had for a long
time, but it now needs to be handled as though it's a brand new plant
for a few months with extra watering help for a couple of
months. (see article on correct watering on the "drought
tolerant gardening" page.) Be
patient if it doesn't stir to life as early as usual. Your
transplanted shrub needs to take some extra time to grow new feeder
roots, but as long as enough water is available, this will happen
quickly. If you are in the habit of using fertilizer, don't
fertilize this particular plant until you see that it has fully
recovered and is growing. Fertilizing a stressed plant will only
speed it along to poorer health. Water is the only important
thing until recovery is complete.
For the first season in its new spot drought can be very damaging, so
once the heat of summer comes, again, give it extra watering
attention. By the end of summer your nursing job is complete and
you can treat it as you would any of your other garden
plants.
Coppicing
also serves an additional purpose - as a last resort for
rejuvenating an old shrub that has grown too large or has too many
congested branches. Technically, this isn't called
coppicing, but all the same principles and plant reactions
apply. All branches are cut to the ground, then after
all the vigorous new growth has ripened, you start training what is,
in essence, a whole new plant. Select a few of the best
branches from the dozens that will sprout as a result of
coppicing, and remove the others completely. This creates a
basic framework for a renewed life. In subsequent years you
can start pruning it normally to shape it as you wish. 
of this weakening
effect - sometimes, exactly what you want!)
There are many other pruning techniques to
learn and, as mentioned above, the starting point is to trust in the
100% guarantee that a healthy shrub will respond predictably to a
pruning cut. How vigorously it responds depends on its
typical growth rate, the health of the plant, how much you've pruned
away at that moment, and whether it has enough moisture to support
fast growth. 
break in the armor. 