Pruning Tips to Keep Your Garden Glorious

You usually feel great after a hair cut, don’t you? Well the same goes for plants. Cutting or pruning back foliage will give your plants a new lease on life. It helps rid them of diseased leaves and encourages new, stronger growth. Here are some tips to help you with pruning your garden:
1. Use the right gardening tools to make pruning easier. A sharp set or pruning shears or secateurs is a must. A pruning saw for thicker branches will be needed if pruning trees. Use a lopper for those hard to reach branches. If you have hedge, invest in a pair of hedge shears. These will be able to mange branches up to almost an inch thick.
2. Pruning is a year-round job in keeping your garden tidy. However, the best time to prune most of your garden plants in usually when they are dormant, late in winter. Shrubs that flower in spring should be pruned right after blooming. This may encourage a second blush from the plant. Watch your later flowering shrubs and prune them just before new growth appears in spring. For roses, you should wait until the new buds are showing and prune then. For trees, pruning should occur just prior to growth in the spring for evergreen varieties and for deciduous trees prune after their dormant stage, before they flower.
3. When pruning, firstly cut off any diseased branches. Also get rid of dead and broken ones. For trees and shrubs, look along the branch to where it is a lighter color – here is a good place to lop off the branch. If any branches are rubbing against each other, take them off as this can produce damage in the future. Make sure you cut cleanly. This will promote better healing of the cut branch’s wound area. Get rid of any scraggly and wild branches that take away from your plant’s shape, especially with hedges. Also prune off any growth sprouting from the roots of the tree. Cut off vertical branches, to ensure sunlight reaches all parts of the tree. Dead-head any flowers and with young shrubs dispose of seed heads. This will boost the plant’s ability to produce new buds. Roses need to be cleared of any diseased or frost-damaged branches.
4. Be careful when cutting into a branch. Apart from ensuring you are cutting into new, green branches, check the direction of your cut. This way you can train the plant to grow in direction you want it to. Make sure you cut on an angle as this will make for healthier re-growth.
5. A note on hedges: some hedges are more formal and pruning is more severe to keep them in shape. It will also need to be done on a regular basis. There are also hedges used for topiary, where the plants are grown and pruned in to a particular decorative shape. This type of pruning takes patience and some artistic flair! Hedges that are used as screening plants can be pruned less vigorously. Just take care of the dead and diseased branches and prune as required.
6. For shrubs your pruning should be contained to getting rid of old and poor-performing branches. Prune these back to the ground. Prune other branches to keep the shrub in a natural, but not messy shape. Vines prefer the less pruning than other plants. Prune only to encourage new growth at the base of the plant. A little bit of pruning after flowering is okay.
7. Fruit trees should be pruned as they grow to encourage high quality fruit. Careful pruning of fruit trees that are two and three years old is required. Seek advice from the nursery where you bought the tree to see what is best for your plant.

Pruning is the best thing you can do for your plants. Apart from making them look good it also improves air circulation around branches and gets sunlight to more parts of the plant. It keeps them happy and thriving in your garden!

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