Pruning & Trimming  

Appearance in the landscape can be greatly enhanced by the proper maintenance of plants through pruning and trimming. Landscape design often uses plants in their natural form.  Maintaining this look is important and proper maintenance ensures a healthy environment for your plants to thrive and maintain their beauty.

Proper pruning has the following benefits:

• controls plant size and shape

• keeps shrubby evergreens well-proportioned and dense

• removes unwanted branches, waterspouts, suckers, and undesirable fruiting structures that detract from plant appearance

Young shrubs should be pruned lightly to make them grow fuller and bushier. With hand pruners, we trim long, unbranched stems by cutting just above a healthy bud. This type of pruning, called heading, encourages lower side branches to develop and enhances the shrub's natural form. When selecting a bud tip to trim to, we keep in mind that the new branch will grow out in the direction of the bud.

Older shrubs may require a more extensive program of thinning cuts.  On shrubs with multiple stems that grow up from the base, like lilac, viburnum, forsythia, and dogwood, we gradually remove all of the old stems while leaving the new, flower-producing growth untouched. Eventually, the new flower-producing stems will completely replace the lackluster old growth.