Plant Crimes
I hold to several assumptions about the created world and man's relation to it. These assumptions are based on what I believe to be the truth of Scripture. Admittedly, other beliefs I hold to about proper interactions with the created world are personal preferences (some of them informed by learning from people far more knowledgeable than I) within the broad framework of unalterable truth. In general, I think shearing of landscape plants is a mistake, with only a few exceptions. Here's why.
1. Often the natural shape of the plant is ruined. Instead of displaying the variety and beauty that are both worship-worthy aspects of God's creation, the plant has had the will of the pruner-wielding person imposed upon it. In my opinion, the pruner's will is almost never an improvement on the Father's creation.
2. Sometimes the functionality of the plant is compromised. I'm thinking especially of trees functioning as a windbreak. In our area, the species most commonly used for this function is the Eastern Redcedar. I have intuitively known for a long time that pruning these trees is hardly ever a good idea (if their windbreak function is to be preserved), but only recently learned why. It turns out that some--maybe most--trees contain latent buds underneath the bark. This means that when the growing tip of a branch is cut off, those latent buds become activated, and put out new growth farther back on the branch or trunk. Not so with Eastern redcedars. They have no latent buds. I believe this to be true of all plants in the juniper family. What this means is that if the green tips of the branches are removed, the remainder of those branches will forever and ever be "dead" for all practical purposes. The stump of the branches will be on ugly display for the life of the tree, and the remaining bare branches will have very limited wind-curbing effect. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would wish to create such a situation. The bare branch could, of course, be removed all the way back to the trunk, and thus be less unsightly, but, minus both the dense green growth and the branches, all windbreak function is lost. Appealing texture and color has been stripped away as well.
3. The unity of a planting may be destroyed. In a new landscape planting, most of the plants are usually small. Except perhaps for specimen plants, we space them appropriately to accommodate their mature size--when the tips of the branches are expected to touch and perhaps intermingle a bit. When a planting is mature, several good things result. One is that there is no longer much need for maintenance around the plants. Mulching between grown-together plants is not needed because weeds will not grow in the dense shade of mature plants. Shading of the ground helps preserve moisture--another reason for being able to skip the mulch. The second benefit is that mature plants without spaces between them "read" as a single landscape element. This can perhaps be best explained by noticing what happens to your eyes when you take in a planting where every plant has been sheared to create space between it and its neighbor. Your eye stops at every plant, jerking along from one to the next. The planting feels and looks disjointed. If they are allowed to grow together, your eye takes it in all at once and its pleasing effect is magnified. If the plants have been well-chosen and well-situated, this single large shape enhances the plants and structures around it. Separating each plant from its neighbors creates the effect of a large area containing many specimen (accent) plants--a huge landscape design faux pas. Unity is a universally-recognized design principle among designers in every profession. Accent is also universally recognized, and always used very sparingly in pleasing designs--probably only once in each area.
4. Pruning may place in full view unattractive elements that ought to be hidden by plant material. Would anyone really rather see lots of mulch than lots of plant material? Or lots of bare walls and hard edges and sharp corners of a building rather than foundation plants along the wall and softening plants at the corners? Would anyone really rather pay for mulch and go to the trouble of spreading it than to have limited or no need for mulch?
5. Blooming potential may be lost. Pruning off dead blooms is fine any time and does not compromise plant health, although it may limit the plant's usefulness to birds or other wildlife during winter. For that reason I almost always wish to leave plants unaltered as they go into winter. Another compelling reason to avoid fall "tidying" is that pruning woody growth at that time will almost certainly make blooms impossible for that plant the following spring. Buds for spring bloom are formed on the previous year's summer growth. Spring blooming plants, if pruning is to be done at all, should be pruned immediately after bloom.
6. The plant's health may be compromised. A pruning cut is an open wound through which disease may enter the plant "body"--just like humans with a skin wound or amputation of a limb. Many proper pruning techniques are aimed at minimizing this risk as much as possible. Willy-nilly snipping here and there does not minimize this risk.
7. Winter die-back may kill a pruned plant. Some plants routinely suffer some winter die-back at the branch tips. In the spring, anything dead can be removed, and new growth occurs on what remains (see #2 above). Cutting back branches hard in the fall destroys the ability of the plant to preserve a forgiving micro-climate around itself during winter cold. In other words, the harshness of the winter cold has access all the way to the lower stems and crown of the plant, with no wind protection from nearby plants (if they are also ruthlessly pruned) and no insulating leaf or snow layer to mitigate the cold. If the lower branches and the crown gets cold enough to freeze the latent buds, those plants will not grow back. Better to leave the branches long and leave the plant able to protect itself through the winter.
So is pruning ever advisable? Of course, under these conditions:
1. To correct shape imbalances. A renegade and over-sized branch may need heading back. The recent ice storm took care of that very untidily in our honeylocust tree in the backyard. If we had done it ourselves last summer when we noticed that one branch was racing along all by itself toward the east property line, the jagged and torn stump of that limb could be on its way to healing by now.
2. To limit interference with necessary human activities. When shrubs or trees encroach on a walkway enough to make walking inconvenient, some heading back is called for. I personally like having the sharp edge of a sidewalk softened by low-growing perennial plant material, but it can quickly become too much and needs to be reined in. Sizing the planting beds appropriately when construction happens can help avoid such problems (running sidewalks too close to the building is very common). Being able to open or see out from windows (if seeing out is needful) is another reason that foundation plantings may need trimming. Choosing appropriately-sized plants eliminates this need. Cutting off the lower limbs of mature trees to admit light or make walking under the trees possible is sometimes necessary.
3. To remove diseased areas. This can help limit spread of the disease.
4. To remove "rogue" growth. Plants with variegated leaves occasionally will put out branches with leaves that are not variegated. These plain branches are usually more robust than the variegated ones, and will eventually take over and destroy the special effect of the colorful leaves if they are not pruned out.
5. To renew the plant. This applies primarily to shrubs. Only rarely should any shrub be cut back entirely--only when the plant has been neglected for a very long time and is unhealthy or lacks vigor because of it, or it interferes impossibly with human activity. It should for sure not happen every year in most cases. What should usually be done instead with mature shrubs in need of rejuvenation is to annually entirely remove a few of the oldest stems and then bring the remaining branches into balance, cutting some branch tips back a bit if necessary. Make the heading-back cuts just ahead of an outward-growing branch so as not to clog up the center of the plant with plant material. The same principle applies to mature trees that need trimming. Don't top them, but judiciously remove dead branches and anything clogging up or growing toward the center of the tree. Topping a tree completely destroys the shape of the tree and encourages the growth of dense and eventually unhealthy regrowth--not good. Leave them alone if they're healthy.
6. To scratch your pruning itch. Just make sure that you're on your own private property and that you're not risking the wrath of God (!), good family relationships, or property devaluation by doing so. You know the saying: "If you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail." If having a pruner, lopper, handsaw, or chainsaw in your hand makes everything look like it needs pruning, have at it. Just make sure that the likely unpleasant consequences are not inflicted on anyone other than yourself. Also, check with God first.
Pruning gone awry constitutes going overboard on the "subduing" part of God's command in Genesis, without regard for the "replenishing" part that is in the same sentence of that command. As I see it, holding the replenishing obligation in as high regard as you do the subduing one is a first step in getting pruning just right.
1. Often the natural shape of the plant is ruined. Instead of displaying the variety and beauty that are both worship-worthy aspects of God's creation, the plant has had the will of the pruner-wielding person imposed upon it. In my opinion, the pruner's will is almost never an improvement on the Father's creation.
2. Sometimes the functionality of the plant is compromised. I'm thinking especially of trees functioning as a windbreak. In our area, the species most commonly used for this function is the Eastern Redcedar. I have intuitively known for a long time that pruning these trees is hardly ever a good idea (if their windbreak function is to be preserved), but only recently learned why. It turns out that some--maybe most--trees contain latent buds underneath the bark. This means that when the growing tip of a branch is cut off, those latent buds become activated, and put out new growth farther back on the branch or trunk. Not so with Eastern redcedars. They have no latent buds. I believe this to be true of all plants in the juniper family. What this means is that if the green tips of the branches are removed, the remainder of those branches will forever and ever be "dead" for all practical purposes. The stump of the branches will be on ugly display for the life of the tree, and the remaining bare branches will have very limited wind-curbing effect. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would wish to create such a situation. The bare branch could, of course, be removed all the way back to the trunk, and thus be less unsightly, but, minus both the dense green growth and the branches, all windbreak function is lost. Appealing texture and color has been stripped away as well.
3. The unity of a planting may be destroyed. In a new landscape planting, most of the plants are usually small. Except perhaps for specimen plants, we space them appropriately to accommodate their mature size--when the tips of the branches are expected to touch and perhaps intermingle a bit. When a planting is mature, several good things result. One is that there is no longer much need for maintenance around the plants. Mulching between grown-together plants is not needed because weeds will not grow in the dense shade of mature plants. Shading of the ground helps preserve moisture--another reason for being able to skip the mulch. The second benefit is that mature plants without spaces between them "read" as a single landscape element. This can perhaps be best explained by noticing what happens to your eyes when you take in a planting where every plant has been sheared to create space between it and its neighbor. Your eye stops at every plant, jerking along from one to the next. The planting feels and looks disjointed. If they are allowed to grow together, your eye takes it in all at once and its pleasing effect is magnified. If the plants have been well-chosen and well-situated, this single large shape enhances the plants and structures around it. Separating each plant from its neighbors creates the effect of a large area containing many specimen (accent) plants--a huge landscape design faux pas. Unity is a universally-recognized design principle among designers in every profession. Accent is also universally recognized, and always used very sparingly in pleasing designs--probably only once in each area.
4. Pruning may place in full view unattractive elements that ought to be hidden by plant material. Would anyone really rather see lots of mulch than lots of plant material? Or lots of bare walls and hard edges and sharp corners of a building rather than foundation plants along the wall and softening plants at the corners? Would anyone really rather pay for mulch and go to the trouble of spreading it than to have limited or no need for mulch?
5. Blooming potential may be lost. Pruning off dead blooms is fine any time and does not compromise plant health, although it may limit the plant's usefulness to birds or other wildlife during winter. For that reason I almost always wish to leave plants unaltered as they go into winter. Another compelling reason to avoid fall "tidying" is that pruning woody growth at that time will almost certainly make blooms impossible for that plant the following spring. Buds for spring bloom are formed on the previous year's summer growth. Spring blooming plants, if pruning is to be done at all, should be pruned immediately after bloom.
6. The plant's health may be compromised. A pruning cut is an open wound through which disease may enter the plant "body"--just like humans with a skin wound or amputation of a limb. Many proper pruning techniques are aimed at minimizing this risk as much as possible. Willy-nilly snipping here and there does not minimize this risk.
7. Winter die-back may kill a pruned plant. Some plants routinely suffer some winter die-back at the branch tips. In the spring, anything dead can be removed, and new growth occurs on what remains (see #2 above). Cutting back branches hard in the fall destroys the ability of the plant to preserve a forgiving micro-climate around itself during winter cold. In other words, the harshness of the winter cold has access all the way to the lower stems and crown of the plant, with no wind protection from nearby plants (if they are also ruthlessly pruned) and no insulating leaf or snow layer to mitigate the cold. If the lower branches and the crown gets cold enough to freeze the latent buds, those plants will not grow back. Better to leave the branches long and leave the plant able to protect itself through the winter.
So is pruning ever advisable? Of course, under these conditions:
1. To correct shape imbalances. A renegade and over-sized branch may need heading back. The recent ice storm took care of that very untidily in our honeylocust tree in the backyard. If we had done it ourselves last summer when we noticed that one branch was racing along all by itself toward the east property line, the jagged and torn stump of that limb could be on its way to healing by now.
2. To limit interference with necessary human activities. When shrubs or trees encroach on a walkway enough to make walking inconvenient, some heading back is called for. I personally like having the sharp edge of a sidewalk softened by low-growing perennial plant material, but it can quickly become too much and needs to be reined in. Sizing the planting beds appropriately when construction happens can help avoid such problems (running sidewalks too close to the building is very common). Being able to open or see out from windows (if seeing out is needful) is another reason that foundation plantings may need trimming. Choosing appropriately-sized plants eliminates this need. Cutting off the lower limbs of mature trees to admit light or make walking under the trees possible is sometimes necessary.
3. To remove diseased areas. This can help limit spread of the disease.
4. To remove "rogue" growth. Plants with variegated leaves occasionally will put out branches with leaves that are not variegated. These plain branches are usually more robust than the variegated ones, and will eventually take over and destroy the special effect of the colorful leaves if they are not pruned out.
5. To renew the plant. This applies primarily to shrubs. Only rarely should any shrub be cut back entirely--only when the plant has been neglected for a very long time and is unhealthy or lacks vigor because of it, or it interferes impossibly with human activity. It should for sure not happen every year in most cases. What should usually be done instead with mature shrubs in need of rejuvenation is to annually entirely remove a few of the oldest stems and then bring the remaining branches into balance, cutting some branch tips back a bit if necessary. Make the heading-back cuts just ahead of an outward-growing branch so as not to clog up the center of the plant with plant material. The same principle applies to mature trees that need trimming. Don't top them, but judiciously remove dead branches and anything clogging up or growing toward the center of the tree. Topping a tree completely destroys the shape of the tree and encourages the growth of dense and eventually unhealthy regrowth--not good. Leave them alone if they're healthy.
6. To scratch your pruning itch. Just make sure that you're on your own private property and that you're not risking the wrath of God (!), good family relationships, or property devaluation by doing so. You know the saying: "If you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail." If having a pruner, lopper, handsaw, or chainsaw in your hand makes everything look like it needs pruning, have at it. Just make sure that the likely unpleasant consequences are not inflicted on anyone other than yourself. Also, check with God first.
Pruning gone awry constitutes going overboard on the "subduing" part of God's command in Genesis, without regard for the "replenishing" part that is in the same sentence of that command. As I see it, holding the replenishing obligation in as high regard as you do the subduing one is a first step in getting pruning just right.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
8:20 AM
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