Pruning

Easy! Easy!

Every day we follow a work plan in the landscape and one day last week this was also the case. I had to prune hollies and laurels next to a kids’ playground. That was my target and I got it done without injuring any kids. The professional that I am, I even overcame the distraction of two beautiful Russian-speaking mommies nearby.

Now, just because you have a solid plan, doesn’t mean you can’t take care of small blemishes on the go. I’m talking about weeds as you rake up your clippings and very low rhododendron branches.

Sad-looking Aucuba

Then I noticed a sad-looking Aucuba japonica shrub nearby. There was some green growth on it but what you really noticed were dead stems towering over the greenery.

Now, my foreman mentioned that he had a shovel and would take the shrub out to put it out of its misery. Dude, not so fast; we need plants! Plants make the landscape pop and they compete with weeds. Removing the shrub would just open up more dead space for weeds to colonize. There is a better way. What would you do?

Pruning

Pruning out the dead stems is one obvious action we can take. Carefully prune out the dead stems and let the shrub recover. It knows what to do so let it grow. But it should be done carefully. We lost some greenery during pruning because some of the live tissue was pushing from the bottom of the dead stems.

Don’t rush your pruning cuts. It’s easy to slip with your hand saw and take out live tissues. Unfortunately, I forgot to take an after picture but trust me, it looked fine. Now the shrub has a chance to thrive and that’s how I like it. If the whole thing die this winter, then we’ll dig it up. Until then, we’re good.

Remember to give your shrubs a chance to shine with proper pruning. Don’t reach for your shovel right away like a savage.

Callicarpa

I love Callicarpas. Every year I do final fall clean-ups for a client in Coquitlam, BC, and she has a beautiful Callicarpa shrub in her front garden. And every year the purple berries look awesome; at a time when the rest of her garden looks like it’s ready for a break.

So, of course, I leave it alone. I snap a few photos for my files and maybe make a few cuts in the back where the shrub is touching the fence. That’s it. You don’t have to do much in late fall. Just enjoy the show.

Pro tip: be careful in summer when the shrub sends shoots out. The flower clusters look small. Much smaller than the berries so don’t snip them off.

January 2024

Now, just this past week I was doing bedwork in White Rock when a crew member asked me to rescue a Callicarpa shrub from under a cedar tree. Since I was looking down, I hadn’t even noticed the shrub.

Our native cedars (Thuja plicata) are fast-growing trees. They don’t need much time to swallow up a small shrub. Really all I could see was a few purple berry clusters.

Lift!

Now, lifting the cedar off the shrub is fairly easy but we need to do it discreetly. We can’t just hack up the cedar to make some room for the shrub. So, I carefully reached in and followed the lowest cedar branches far inside the tree. Then I made my cut there, eliminating the whole branch so it looked natural. As opposed making heading cuts on the cedar tree and leaving the cuts to show.

Don’t rush this work! Make a cut and step away to see how much lift you’ve achieved. It should look natural: just enough opening for the shrub and not too much lift for the cedar.

Good enough?

Take a look at my work: is it good enough?

Note how the Callicarpa is reaching out, stretching for light. That’s why there are only a flower clusters showing. All plants need light to feed themselves and to thrive. I’m hoping this Callicarpa will appreciate having more light. I suspect we’ll have to do this again in a season or two but that’s ok. If I remember, I will check back to see if there are more flower clusters present eleven months from now.

Plant separation is an important issue as gardens mature and evolve. You can make room for some plants; and some you have to move. Some that didn’t make it will get removed.

Rhododendron reduction

What do you do when your rhododendrons get too big? You can reduce them with your hand saw and hope the shrubs recover. That’s what happened at one strata (multi-family) site where the residents wanted their rhododendron significantly reduced.

So grab a sharp hand saw and get to work. But before you do, remember one rule: rough-barked specimens recover better than smooth-barked specimens. Luckily, in my case, the shrubs were rough-barked.

Latent buds

Rhododendron reduction works because the shrubs have latent buds hiding under the bark. Once you reduce your shrub these buds start emerging and popping. You just have to be patient. Once, I reduced a client’s rhododendron so hard, the lady wasn’t exactly happy. I told her the shrub would recover nicely and I was right. It just took way longer than I expected.

Now back to our strata example.

Follow-up visit

Months later I showed up on site and went to see the rhododendrons just as daylight was fading fast. Clearly the latent buds I had seen popping months earlier were now fully grown and showing buds. Those buds are set for next summer so don’t touch them in December.

One problem

I did notice one problem. There were several large stems without any buds or growth. It’s as if there were no latent buds anywhere, which is weird. I have no idea why the odd stem is bare, looking like a stick.

The fix is obvious: follow the bare stem to the next green growth and remove it just above it so the “stick” doesn’t show anymore. If the entire branch is bare then we’ll remove right at the base. As if we were coppicing it.

This will give us the look we want: a green rhododendron shrub, nicely reduced by more than half. Now to keep it at that height, we’ll diligently remove each season’s new growth.

Conclusion

Yes, you can reduce your rhododendrons significantly thanks to latent buds hiding under the bark. Just remember that rough-barked specimens recover better than smooth-barked specimens. If you get branch sections totally devoid of any growth and poking out like “sticks”, just remove them with a sharp hand saw.