The Pruning Book

Rating:
Summary: "The (fun) Pruning Book"
Review: Not only is The Pruning Book useful for our North Temperate Zone climate, but it is a joy to read. Of course, we all know that before pruning comes planting, which subject the author touches-on in his chapter on fruits and nuts.

I feel it's important to note that Author Lee Reich holds a doctorate in horticulture with an extensive background in pruning research. With regard to pruning trees, he emphasizes the fact that slow does it -- over a period of several years for both young and old. Regarding plants that can be intensively pruned, Lee points out how to exploit to our advantage the tendency of many woody plants to sprout prolifically. Such plants include hedges, topiary, standards, fruit etc.. Yet, he warns us against the heavy pruning of health-compromised woody plants. Dr. Reich, as well, underscores the fact that proper pruning includes an emphasis on minimalist pruning.

Lee hopes that we have properly sited our major woody plants -- planted the right tree in the right place, so to speak. He, nevertheless, also deals with those fun 'though labor intensive pruning forms -- pollarding and pleaching. Lee lists a number of fast-growing deciduous trees that "take" to pollarding as well as listing some trees with strong, flexible branches for pleaching. This is not a serious book of lists, just a productive attempt at teaching us how to form our own lists.

Good advice abounds throughout including apropos diagrams and photos. Plant specific advice is often augmented by easy to read tables in many of the categories of pruning that he discusses. Lee even covers something we forget to include in the subject of pruning -- mowing. And, necessarily, he does justice to the different pruning needs of the various maturational stages of our woodies. This includes training of the young plant as well as maintenance of the mature, and the finer points of renovation of the old and neglected.

Lee's advice includes the "why," not just the "how" that most pruning books concentrate upon. He makes the often dry subject of pruning easy to swallow with a spoon full of all sorts of interesting and helpful information... I bet you didn't know that Japanese wisteria twines clockwise while the Chinese species climbs counterclockwise. I'll leave you with a final observation on the latter. After seeing numerous structures literally torn apart by wisteria, I'm going to plant it as a tree -- per a commonly used method suggested by the author.

I love my pruning tome done by the American Horticultural Society, but, The Pruning Book is also "a keeper."