Pruning: A Practical Guide

by Peter McHoy

Book Overview

A sensible guide to pruning demonstrates how to successfully prune hundreds of shrubs, trees, and climbers, enhancing the health and beauty of each. By the author of Container Garden. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558596348
• ISBN13: 9781558596344
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.9" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Reference pays for itself and is a joy!

This book may seem an extravagance, especially if you have the wonderful "The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques" (1998), by Tracy DiSabato-Aust, but it is the perfect reference that pays for itself over the years. In contrast to the plant list in the DiSabato-Aust book, this book has full color pix of all plants (perennials & shrubs). The index is useful!It teaches you to recognize specific plant forms to which you apply the 9 pruning techniques that cover all bases. This book makes it simple to prune any plant, and the other book will tell you that almost all plants benefit from pruning. As an example, red-twig (or yellow-twig) dogwood should be pruned by completely taking out the oldest 1/3 of branches each year in late winter. This keeps color strong and the bush uncrowded.Lavender should have 1/3 of last year's new growth pruned off at end of winter, and you have to start this when the plant is young. (I didn't, and you can kill it by cutting back to hard wood.)It also tells you the difference among all the types of roses (critical, because some bloom on second-year wood) in a 6-pg section copiously illustrated.I expect that the new version deals with new plants, but have not seen it.