One of the things that we want to
demonstrate on this red twig dogwood,
is the proper way to prune.
The red twig dogwood should be a very
handsome shrub, it should be an asset to
the landscape through all four seasons.
It has some white flowers in the spring
beautiful foliage in the summer,
moderate fall color, but in the winter
these beautiful red twigs should stand
out against the snow.
This specimen doesn't do very well
because it's been improperly pruned.
That pruning is given rise to some
disease problems and things that should
be removed by the pruning process but
haven't been done so.
We want to talk about three different
kinds of cuts that we can make on a shrub
to effectively prune it.
Those three cuts are heading cuts,
which we would reserve primarily for
hedges and those have been improperly
done on this plant because we don't want
to turn this into a hedge.
We also have thinning cuts, where we come
in and cut to a side branch. If we look at
a thinning cut as apposed to a heading cut
right here on this twig, we would come in
and make our cut right here at this point.
That diverts the growth into these side
branches so they'll be more handsome and
you don't leave a dead stub that's going
to die back and get canker.
Finally, we need to go clear to the bottom
of the plant to make a removal cut.
Removal cuts will be done to thin the
plant out or to remove dead material.
We would remove this one clear at
the base and get rid of it.
This plant needs lots of removal cuts.
So we would come down to the base and
first start taking out all of the
dead wood.
That's a good rule to remember for any
shrub. Take out the dead wood first, and
then come back and see how much other
pruning needs to be done.
After we have successfully removed
all of the dead material, then we start
looking for the other material that might
be marginal. If we start on this limb we
can see it's dead up above.
We come down to this point and we see that
it's still living here but down below here
it looks old, it's primarily dead and this
would be a good candidate to be removed
because it can be renewed down here at
the base. If we remove it, we see that we
took out one part of a stem that was still
alive but most of this was dead.
So after you take out the dead material
come into a shrub and start taking out
the broken, diseased material.
And that's the second step in your pruning
process.
Once we have made our major removal
cuts at the bottom of the plant, than
that's opened the plant up and it looks
much more attractive already.
Now we have to come back and finish with
the micro pruning. That is pay attention
to the details up at the top of the plant.
This is the way the top twigs on a red
twig dogwood should look. They should be
thin, this is where the flowers are going
to appear. Lots of vigorous wood with
a nice bright red color.
If we get down into the bottom of this
plant because it's been so badly abused
we see that we have some very ragged,
unattractive cuts.
We should always have a sharp cut made
at a forty-five degree angle.
This one looks more like it's been
torn off and that takes a long time to
heal, which allows a lot of the diseases
to get into the plant.
If we're going to decide where to make
that cut, we should come to an outward
facing bud and make a forty-five degree
cut right above that bud.
That forces this bud to come out
this little area will heal properly and
we'll end up with a nice twig.
We then have to proceed to clean up all
of this dead material, here, that's
been improperly pruned.
So we have to do a lot hand thinning or
pruning. But once we've done that we
shouldn't have to come back and do that
on a yearly basis, if we prune the
shrub correctly.
One of the disadvantages of making a
heading cut is that it stimulates the
growth of many side branches.
You can see that a heading cut was
made here and we stimulated a couple
of different side branches to grow.
Then later on heading cuts were made
here, stimulating branches, here, here
and we end up with a hat rack or a very
thick appearance to the shrub instead of
these long graceful stems that so
characterize a red twig dogwood.
To correct this we're going to have to
come in and remove about half of those
stems. Many of them are undesirable
because they have such very poor angles
on the branches and so you end up doing
quite a bit of pruning and really not
getting back to quite the growth that
you wanted or the looks.
So eventually this stem will come out
clear to the bottom and we'll let a new
one come up and replace it.
Only then will the shrub be returned to
it's normal character and beauty.
If our plants are getting out of bounds,
that is they're getting to high.
There's a right and a wrong way to reduce
the height of that plant.
The wrong way is to come in with a pair
of head shears and cut them all off at
the same height.
The right way is to reduce the crown or
do some thinning cuts. We make thinning
cuts by coming down and making a cut
directing the growth to a side branch.
We can make a cut right there and direct
the growth to these side branches. If we
need to come down further, we would come
to this point in the plant, cut it there,
and we've reduced the height even further.
If we had to come down more, we'd come
down to this point and cut it there.
Now of course we'd have to make similar
reductions on the other twigs in the
adjoining area to effectively reduce that
height.
We do not leave stubs, nor do we
make all of the cuts at one height.
One of the major contributors to improper
pruning of shrubs is the power head sheer,
that's a very quick and easy way to prune
plants but it also ultimately means that
the plants are much harder to maintain.
If we look at this area here, these have
been sheered to keep them out of the
parking lot, which it's done, but it's
done it at the expense of the growth
of the plant and the beauty of the plant.
Typically, as you've see an area that's
been sheered, you see a lot of ragged
cuts. You see a lot of die back and you
have to come in and do a lot of corrective
pruning in order to get that looking
good again.
If we look at this area of the shrub here
we see that this area has all of the ends
clipped off at the same point.
We can't correct it out here we have to
come back in here to do our correction.
We would come back into this area and
again make thinning cuts to side branches.
First off, again we would remove the dead
wood. We would remove the wood that
is improperly placed that is going down
in the wrong direction or that might be
too thick.
And we would have to come in again and
start making our cuts to some side
branches to stimulate the kind of growth
that we want to have.
If the area is dead too far back, we would
come select a branch down here, a side
branch, and make our cut there.
But even removing the dead wood will
substantially improve the appearance of
this poorly pruned plant.
One of the dangers of using head sheers is
that you make every cut a flat top or
you give the shrub a very unnatural
appearance.
You also open many pruning cuts and you
can see that the diseases have got in
and have substantially killed portions
of this plant. All of the attractive wood
has come from down underneath here and
is coming up and giving the beauty of
the plant all of this that was sheered
with a hedge clipper, is very unattractive.
To correct that we're going to have to
come back down in here, find a good
growing shoots such as this one.
Off to the side, remove this area here
that's dead and get rid of that kind
of material so that the plant can once
again have an attractive natural shape.
Well this is a very typical before
and after shot. This is what we started
with, lots of dead wood, improperly
headed branches, and a very unattractive
shrub. This is the after, we've reduced
the height, we have cleaned out the dead
wood, we got rid of the dead and diseased
material, and we've opened this shrub up
so that it's going to have a beautiful
red winter color, a nice spring flower,
beautiful leaves in the summer time, and
some nice fall color. The plant is much
healthier and is going to look much
more attractive in the landscape.
One of the reasons why so many shrubs are
so badly pruned, is that people don't
understand how to effectively reduce
the height or the width without cutting
them off and making them into a hedge.
If we look at this bar berry and use this
as the reference point. And say we want to
reduce the height of this by about
eighteen inches, we can very simply
do that. Remember we are going to use
our thinning cuts.
Here we have a way of effectively reducing
the height, we take this long twig that
is growing out of bounds, we follow it
down, find out where it branches out to
a side branch or where it connects onto
another stem, and make the cut at that
point.
If we keep doing that over the entire
length of the shrub we find that we have
effectively reduced the height and yet
this shrub still has a very natural
appearance and doesn't look like
somebody's come in and butchered it and
made it very unattractive in the landscape.
A concrete mow strip is an excellent
landscape maintenance tool. It allows you
to keep the shrubs and the turf grass
separated. But what happens when the
shrubs start to invade or come over into
the turf grass area?
Well you want to define this and keep
the shrubs back so that you can see the
mow strip and so you aren't whacking
them with the lawn mower.
Avoid the temptation to come along here
with a hedge clipper and cut these all off
square. Now if we have shoots that are
coming out too far, again, we follow our
thinning method.
And we would come back, find a suitable
side branch, lift it up, and right here
at this point we would make our cut.
So if we see that this one is coming out
clear into the turf grass area, we make
that cut, we have eliminated that problem.
And we simply go along and do that for
each shrub as it starts to stick out
into the concrete mow strip.
It's a very simple and easy thing to do.
If you don't let it get too bad.
By doing this carefully, we have cleaned
up the mow strip.
We have reduced the spread of the shrubs
and we've kept the very natural
appearance. Now the one thing we don't
want to do is to make all of the
cuts at the same point.
Because if we do, we stimulate several
different branches to grow at that one
point and then the next time we come back
and have to prune it's much more difficult
and our pruning has to be much more
drastic.
We just showed you the right way to prune
Junipers, this is the wrong way to prune
Junipers.
Remember that if we cut back to where
there is no green foliage, it takes
many years to fill back in and cover
that exposed area. If you see these kind
of large cuts and this kind of brown
tissue, this is not the way to prune.
This should have a much more natural
look and come down like this.
And had these been pruned properly
raised up underneath and cut way back,
they could've looked much more
attractive. Now the only way to salvage
that is to come in and go back even
further removing some of these stems
clear back into the base of the main plant.
Now that doesn't immediately correct the
problem but it gets rid of some of these
ragged cuts and then hopefully these
shoots will come down and cover up this
brown dead area, that looks so
unattractive.
When pruning Evergreens we need to make
sure that we maintain that natural free
form shape, that makes the shrub so
attractive. If we want to reduce the
height or spread, we follow the same rules
that is we always come in and make our
thinning cuts. We come in and cut to
side branches, so we make a cut there.
If we want to come back further we come
down to a second group of side branches
and make a cut right here or we may even
remove that particular stem completely.
But when we're done, it doesn't look like
we've cut the shrub at all.
If we want to reduce the height of the
plant, then we can come back in here and
again come back and find where it connects
onto a side branch, make a cut at that
point. We can make one right here.
Make another one right here, another one
here, here, here, here.
We continue to do that until we've got the
plant at the height and width that we
desire. So we have effectively reduced the
height of the plant, but we haven't made
it look like it has a bad pruning job
or a bad hair cut.
One of the best ways to reduce your
labor and of course your costs in the
landscape, is to select the right plant
for the right place in the first place.
If you look at this birds nest spruce,
this dwarf arborvitae, and this low
growing juniper, you can see that these
plants have filled this area in very
nicely. Yet these plants are over ten
years old, they've had very little pruning
and consequently the maintenance cost
on these are very low.
So selecting the right plant will often
make the difference between pruning once
every four or five years and heavy pruning
done annually.
Which of course if very costly.