Climbing Hydrangea – Spring and Summer

So here we have a vine that is very small and demure when you first get it (and often for many years after), and then one day it decides to go for the eavestrough.   (WordPress doesn’t like my spelling of that word, but I checked the dictionary and I didn’t find any alternative – so it stays.)    It not only goes for the eavestrough it goes for the porch as well.  A close up of the attack on the eavestrough.  Both before and afterwards.  It looks fairly straight- forward, and to some extent it is, but once stems start doing exploratory growing into cracks it can take some winkling to get them out.  Here is the after photo of the porch, where you can see that I have somewhat liberated the porch railing.  You can also now see the robins nest in the corner (not necessarily a good thing for the robins, but I needed to get the vine away from the roof, and I didn’t want to take out the nest, so it did end up getting rather exposed).   The hydrangea as a whole I made a lot narrower, not just to reduce the weight on the house, but also to keep it from intruding on the garden and the driveway.  This is a thumbnail → of the before from the front.  And here is the after shot of the front.  And here is the after shot from behind.  The sun had moved by the time I finished (Tempus fugit), which of course makes it difficult to compare, but if you look above (“look up, look way up”) you’ll see that you can see more of the wall at the base, which makes a good reference.

Now all this was in August, after the plant had finished blooming (more or less).  August is rather late for pruning, but still early enough for any new growth to harden off before winter.  In fact, I had to give this another hair cut this spring.  You can see where it’s making for the eavestrough again.  Spring also makes the overall structure of the plant more apparent.  So here are the after photos.  This time I didn’t have to do so much to rescue the porch.  Mostly I worked to ensure that the plant stayed in tight to the house, and didn’t go for the roof.

Wild Rose/Cane Rose – Deadwood (not the series, or the town)

I know that in the entry on Tea Roses that I said to prune roses when the Forsythia is blooming – however – sometimes people miss that deadline.  And in the case of wild &/or cane roses it’s a little hard to meet as they leaf out very, very early and waiting for the forsythia means you miss the moment.  These roses don’t generally need a lot of pruning.  For the little one I have in the back (in a spot that’s way too shady for a rose), I mostly just remove the tiny bit of winter kill and anything the squirrels have damaged (at least I think it’s squirrels – could be something two legged, but I don’t like to accuse anyone).  This is not mine, but a beautiful, big one belonging to a gardening client.  It hadn’t been pruned for a while, and although it wasn’t on the priority list, when I looked at those canes shooting straight up the middle I figured it warranted a closer look and some pruning. 

Once I got started, of course, one thing just led to another.  In order to prune from the bottom up (see General Principles) I had to get there, which meant getting into the corner behind the shrub.  This is the before shot → of the base.  Turned out there was a lot of dead wood hidden under those beautiful arching canes.  (←) So my main work turned out to be removing dead wood.  This after shot → is a little closer in than the one above, but you can definitely see that the dead wood is gone.   Below is another close up of the base.  Much airier as you can see – always important with roses. The next job was to shorten those rogue canes and encourage them to branch out instead (and hopefully arch like the rest of the shrub ↓).  So here is the whole shrub after I finished.  The photo doesn’t really show it, but the whole bush was much lighter and airier after I was done.  No dead wood now to choke new growth or as an unattractive background to blossoms – when they come.

Three Little Maids – Rose of Sharon

I wasn’t sure whether to put this under Spring Pruning, or Late Spring Pruning, so I put it under both.  Rose of Sharon blooms very late in the year, it also leafs out very late in spring, and I kind of like to wait until I can see those hints of green before I start pruning.   Mostly, I’m removing dead tips, old seed pods, and shortening a little, but sometimes there is more to do.  These ‘three little maids’ are actually in good shape, but the garden bed is small, and they are very close together so a little pruning on a regular basis is a good idea to keep them in proportion with the bed and with one another.  So here are the individual before pictures.  I did think of naming them after the ‘three little maids’ in the title, but I realize gardeners are not necessarily Gilbert & Sullivan fans, so I’ve desisted.        The middle one of the three I photographed from the side, so you could get a better sense of what it looked like both before and after, as it’s slightly behind it’s sisters and a little obscured by them.  However, it did make a good subject for some before and after closeups to demonstrate another General Principle:  removing growth that is growing inwards and/or rubbing against other  branches.  Before →, After ↓.   Just wish I’d been the same distance away when I photographed.  However, I think it illustrates the point.  Rose of Sharon has a naturally open structure, and I like to encourage that.    So here are the three after shots.  This was the first year giving these three a trim so I was a bit more drastic than I usually am with Rose of Sharon.     I probably did the most work with the one ↑ that is on the far right of the group as it is leaning a lot due to competing with its sisters and in consequence having a bit of a contretemps with the sandcherry to its right.  It’s like trying to keep down the bullying in a schoolyard.  You have to keep everyone far enough apart that they don’t fight.  So here we are, the Three Little Maids from School (OK so I got my G&S reference in anyway).

Red Osier Dogwod – To Hard Prune or Not to Hard Prune?

Red osier dogwood, or tag alder, or if we are being proper Cornus stolonifera: most people grow this for it’s beautiful red bark, which really stands out against the winter snow.  In the wild it gets nibbled by deer and keeps a nice mid-sized profile with lots of bright red bark.  In gardens it tends to take off without the deer to prune it, and the older bark looses much of the intense red colour that was the reason for buying it in the first place.  That’s where pruning comes in.

Here’s one that hasn’t been pruned hard for a long time.  You can really see the loss of colour at the base.  It’s also leaning forward towards the light; in fact, the previous year I had removed some growth that was so low and long as to be almost horizontal and it was starting to root and form a thicket.  This is the afterwards.  I haven’t cut it back hard as the owner likes the privacy screening that it provides for the porch.  However, I am gradually taking out older stems and encouraging new growth so that the whole thing will be lower and bushier overall.           So, on the left is the same shrub a year later, just before pruning.  As you can see I like to prune these very early, just as they are about to leaf out.  The new buds come in so tightly to the stem that the only time you can cut without having to leave a large stub, is if you get in there before they have really leafed out.  Since pruning from the bottom up is one of the General Principles I like to take close ups of the base for before and after as well as an overall photo.   So here is the before close up on the right and below is the after closeup.  As you can see I got a lot more drastic this year with regards to removing older stems.

Below  is an overall look at the after pruning for this particular shrub.

It’s so low now that you can get a really good look at the climbing hydrangea that is next to/behind it – but I’m saving that one for another entry.

Now, of course, you are wondering about the title of this entry and wondering where the hard pruning comes in.  Right about now, in fact.  Like the shrub above, this one had gone virtually unpruned for many years, and was trying to form a thicket and push out its neighbours.  For some inexplicable reason I don’t have the original before photo for this, so you will just have to take my work for it that it was around 8 feet tall.  This is in fact the follow-up photo a few weeks after pruning, and as you can see it has started to leaf out.  When you cut a shrub back this hard you are usually cutting back to dormant buds that are not showing any particular signs of life other than the slight markings that show where they are.  Other than that you sort of have to take it on faith that they will break dormancy.    Here it is the next spring, and as you can see, despite the hard pruning it is back to reaching for the top of the fence, although this time it is not competing as much with it’s neighbours.  (Mind, I had to do something similar to the neighbours as they too were getting too big for the space they were in.)     The requisite close-up of the base.  (Before on the left, and after below on the right.) As you can see, one of the stems I shortened the year before, never really branched out – just sort of went into shock and died – so it will have to go.  As you can see, I was not quite as drastic as last year with this one.  Since I cut it back hard last year, it needs a chance to branch out; although there are some people who like to cut their osiers down hard each year, rather like willows, in order to get lots of little stems with intense colour.  In this case I’m going for something in between that and having it turn into an oversized mess.  So here we are all happily pruned for the year and raring to go.  These dogwoods do bloom in summer, which is another reason to prune them early in the year, but the blooms are not what most people notice, and if for whatever reason you find yourself needing to prune this later in the year, go for it.  (Which is why this entry is under Late Spring Pruning as well as Spring Pruning.) Just be aware that the earlier you prune it, the more time it has to produce intensely coloured stems to brighten your garden in the winter.

Butterfly Bush

I got called in to help out a gardener who had been gifted with many shrubs by gardening friends who felt her garden needed help, and who was now in danger of being over-run by shrubs that had been planted a little to close to each other for comfort.  What looks like good proportions in a garden when plants are young, is rarely that case five or more years down the line.  In fact, the more I garden, the more aware I am that the ‘mature’ size listed on the label of a plant in the garden center is some sort of mythical ‘mature’ size.  This is particularly true with shrubs and evergreens.  The ‘mature’ size listed seems to be reached within five to ten years of purchase, but the plant in question has not received that memo and just keeps on growing.  Just something to keep in mind when you are placing shrubs in the garden – they need space.

However, back to the butterfly bush of the title.  This was one shrub the client had been diligently pruning, but it was still out of hand, and in particular it was starting to grow over the stairs from the deck down to the garden, blocking both view and passage.  This is what is looked like when I first met it, and below is what it looked like shortly afterwards.

I left the branch on the right somewhat taller than the others, because that’s where there was the most obvious sign of healthy new growth coming.  I should have trusted the plant more, and the miniscule spots of green lower down.  A shrub that’s been around for years has lots of reserves and this one did not disappoint.  Although they don’t show in the photo, there were also the beginning of shoots at the base and in many other placed on the stems.  These tend to come in clusters and a little judicious thinning is often in order.  The nice thing is that in early spring this is easy to do by just using a thumb or finger to rub them out.   (So to speak)  I also rubbed out any stems that were aiming to grow towards the stairwell.  Although the bush had been cut back hard in the past, it was this secondary pruning – specifically targeting branches that would be a problem down the road – that was missing.

Well this spring the bush was at it again – trying to take over the world – and with our early warm spell, leafing out at a ridiculously early time.  This is late March, whereas the photos above were taken in very early May.  As you can see, it’s been going for the stairwell again, although not as much as in previous years.  Nevertheless, time for a severe pruning.  This time, I was not fooled into leaving the right hand branch longer than the rest.

This closer shot gives you an idea of how much growth there was that originated well below the cuts I made the year before.  That’s where I started thinning.  With shrubs, in particular, the rule to prune from the bottom up really applies.  Or at least it applies in the decision making process.  Once you’ve decided that an entire stem has to go, it’s best to work from the top down.  Taking down a huge branch in sections is much more manageable, and you greatly reduce the risk of the whole thing toppling over as you are cutting and ripping the bark past the cutting point.  As you can see, I took advantage of some of the new stems that were coming from the base to remove (as much as possible) the stem that was on the extreme left and was the one producing all the foliage that was blocking the stairway. The owner wanted to keep up her pruning skills, so I left markings on the younger stems as the best spots to cut. Because the bush had leafed out so early, I wanted to cheat a little in case there was a cold snap and we lost the top growth, and I place the marks rather higher than I would have normally.

As it turned out, there was a cold spell, and the early leaves all got singed, but they were promptly replaced by new growth.  I expect that once again I’m going to wonder if I shouldn’t have trusted the shrub a bit more and cut lower down.  However, I’m quite pleased with my effort to gradually replace the older thick stems with younger ones, especially ones that don’t lean out so much over the steps and the garden.    I will be seeing this shrub again shortly, and may just do a judicious snip or two, just to keep it in line.

Cleaning up after Clematis Wilt

As promised here is an entry on pruning a clematis that had clematis wilt the season before.  This particular clematis is a jackmanii with beautiful, big, purple blooms that grew like topsy and had to be cut back hard every year and was still a bit of a tangle.  Last season, out of the blue, a huge part of it succumbed to wilt.  Not having encountered this before, I did a fair bit of research before anything else.  The one thing every expert agreed on was the importance of removing and destroying all the damaged material.  So that’s what I did.  Because clematis wilt is blamed on a fungus (differing opinions on which one), I knew it would be very important to remove the dead wood without damaging the healthy wood, as that would create a re-entry point for the fungus.

This is how is looked in late March.  I don’t normally prune that early, but the roses and clematis were both starting to break buds, so it seemed best to just go for it.  As with my previous clematis entry, I just worked my way down in sections from top to bottom, carefully extracting dead sections, and separating them from the healthy stems with as little pulling as possible – and no yanking.  Yanking is very tempting, but counter-productive.

This is the base, and you can see the tangle of stems I’m normally greeted with every spring.  This is a very exuberant plant.  As you will see below, a lot of these stems had to go, but it was really encouraging to see how much new growth was already coming up from the base of the plant.

So this is what I ended up with.  It looks horribly sparse.  But at least the plant is alive and (for the moment) healthy.  One of the experts I consulted felt that the real danger with clematis wilt was that clematis are extremely thirsty plants with stems that are essentially very, very thin straws and they get stressed, and vulnerable to disease if they don’t have adequate access to water.  Part of his reasoning was that he had never seen clematis wilt on plants growing in the wild by streams.  I suspect he has a point, but I also discovered that species clematis (the sort most likely to be discovered growing wild by streams) are not susceptible to clematis wilt – only the fancy big-flowered varieties get it.  So, obviously cutting out the dead material and making sure it got adequately watered was not enough.  So I went out and got some fungicide to spray on the plant.  One expert said sulfur-based and the other said copper-based.  I confess my decision was based on practicalities.  The sulfur-based fungicide has application instructions that were more on a scale that was compatible with the hand-pump I was going to be using, and unlike the copper-based fungicide it did not sport a skull-and-crossbones on the side of the package.  I wore a kerchief over my face all the same, and probably looked like a bank robber who had no clue where the bank was, but what can you do.  (Also, importantly, there are no edibles being grown in this garden, aside from some dill that has only just sprouted.) When I sprayed (early May) I noticed that there was already a stem that looked severely wilted, so I cut that out down to the base and re-sprayed the area, especially the fresh cut.  I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see if these measures are sufficient.

Early Blooming Clematis

Early blooming clematis are generally left for pruning until after they bloom.  However, I find that by then all the new growth makes it very difficult to get at any dead growth and eventually the whole thing becomes an unsightly mess.  At the same time, taking out the dead growth, even in early spring is very tricky as the healthy growth is often clinging to the dead stuff and extricating it without damaging it calls for a lot of patience.  One of the chief lessons of gardening.

This is a lovely, early bloomer that for many years didn’t do much, but for the last two seasons has gotten more and more prolific.  When it wasn’t doing much, I kept waiting for that after period to prune it.  But I found that wasn’t working as well as I hoped.  So I’ve solved the problem by pruning in very early spring when the new growth is just visible.  I’ve also spread out the pruning over a couple of years – taking out dead stems in bits and pieces as they become accessible.

Here’s the base, so you can see just how tangled the whole thing has gotten.  This year I decided to really get caught up on the backlog of dead stems;  especially since a fellow clematis in this garden got clematis wilt last year (more about that in my next entry).  I thought it was important to clear out all the dead wood and leave lots of space for the new growth.

The result, I know, looks very drastic.  But now at least I feel confident that the new growth, and especially the flowers will look their best, not at all obscured by the older, dead growth.

I did not shorten any of the healthy stems.  This clematis blooms very early and shortening healthy stems would have meant losing bloom for this year.  Instead I worked by way down each dead stem, taking the whole thing down from the top, foot by foot.  (The usual rule is to prune from the bottom up, but vines are an exception.) This is very slow going, but by being this slow and methodical, I was able to remove the dead growth without damaging the healthy growth.

Here is the base again.  A number of healthy stems, but not the tangle it was before.  Mind you with older clematis, a certain amount of tangle is to be expected.  It’s just that from time to time you need to get rid of all dead and unproductive wood.

Small, Shrubby Clematis

When I started gardening, I thought of all clematis as vines, climbing up trellises or falling over fences.  That’s until I started gardening for a client with far more eclectic tastes in garden plants than most people.  So I got introduced to small, shrubby clematis.  Now my client is very good about saving labels, but I didn’t feel like asking her to hunt through them all just for my blog.  I did try looking through some reference books, but could not find an exact match.  In the end it doesn’t matter – pruning is about following the natural growth patterns of the plant, along with a series of general principles; not about memorizing a new set of rules for each new sub-species on the planet.  That would be insane.

Here’s the before shot of the first of the shrubby clematis.  It’s not a particularly early bloomer, but at the same time it doesn’t grow very fast, so it doesn’t need a lot of pruning.  It has a very open shape to it which I try to keep, without it getting so wide that it all seems to fall apart in the middle.  Mainly I take out dead or damaged bits and then cut back healthy stems to all about the same height (just a little longer in the middle – although as the outside stems tend to droop they are often actually the same length, just the effect of being longer in the middle remains). 

Here’s the after photo, and as you can see there isn’t a drastic difference.  I find that with most clematis the top buds are not always the most vigorous looking and I often cut back to the second pair of buds.  That’s primarily what I did with this clematis.  As you can see there are definitely stubs – they are just a fact of life with clematis: first because the buds come in opposite pairs, and secondly because they get knocked off by the least little thing – especially waving clippers, and spring jackets.

This next one is a bit of a no-brainer.  It grows to about 2 or 2 1/2 feet (sorry I’ve never completely gone metric), and needs some support as the stems are quite slender  and floppy – unlike the clematis above which has much woodier stems.  It blooms mid-summer, but dies back completely in the winter, so it’s just a matter of cutting it back to the ground in the spring as soon as you can see new shoots emerging.  Actually, you probably don’t need to wait until then, but if you leave the dead stems in place, it reduces the chances of accidentally stepping on the spot and annihilating the poor thing just as it’s trying to emerge from the ground.

Here it is afterwards. The new shoots are hard to make out, but they are there.  I stuck some small bamboo stakes around so you can see where it is (until it gets tall enough to be seen by itself), and to give us something to tie supports to when the time comes.

Sage is too a Shrub (So’s Lavender)

Sage being an herb, it’s easy to forget that it’s also a shrub and as it gets older needs regular pruning.  (Especially if you only ever harvest a few leaves here and there and never cut off great swathes for making sage tea.)

My Mom had a volunteer sage growing between the paving stones of her patio (where it loved the drainage) which eventually developed an inch thick trunk, with wonderful slightly peeling bark, that trailed across the patio looking very ‘tumbling tumbleweed’ – all because my Mom didn’t have the heart to cut the thing back hard in the spring.  Unfortunately it succumbed when the patio was replaced by a deck, but that’s another story.  (Below is the before of a nice rambly sage – just not as rambly as my Mom’s.)

I generally cut sage back fairly hard in Spring, once it’s a few years old and the stems have started to get woody.  The growth you cut off can always be dried for tea or such.  Just make sure that if there are not healthy clumps of leaves where you cut back to; that there is at least a hint of a green shoot peeking out through the bark.  As long as there are these hints of green, there is a decent chance that new growth will emerge from that spot.  Also, of course, I take out any dead or damaged stems.  (Here’s the after of the above rambly sage.)

These rules also apply equally to lavender, another herb/shrub that tends to get very woody and leggy if you aren’t careful.  When it’s young I usually just give it a bit of a hair cut, but as it’s get’s older the hair cuts need to get more severe.  I know that elsewhere I have railed against leaving stubs, but with lavender I find it easiest to just gather up all the stems and cut across.  Stubs are minimal and it gives the shrub that nice rounded look.  I know it always seems a crime cutting off all those young grey-green shoots, but at least your hands will smell great afterwards.  Just don’t cut off all the new growth.  You’re going for a haircut, not a shave.

Crabapple – Before it Blooms

Now I know that in General Principles I said to prune things that bloom in the spring after they bloom.  But sometimes you prune when you can, not when you should.  This particular crab apple has a very distinctive arch to the south.  That’s largely because there used to be a whopping big maple next door (north side), that it was competing with for light.  That tree finally came down (first a big chunk in a wind storm, and the rest less violently when the arborist got at it.  At any rate, the owner and I thought it would be nice to try and encourage some growth on the north-east side so the tree would some day look less lop-sided.  (The arch would be very nice, except for all that rambling growth up around the 2nd floor deck.  It’s a little too off balance for a proper wind-swept look.)

Now there was only myself and a step-ladder so the before and after photos of the whole tree won’t look that much different.  Although I did take off quite a bit from the far end – it just doesn’t show in the photo.

However, I think the main thing with this tree is showing the process of whittling down all those eager young sprouts, into just a few that can be encouraged to grow into new trunks that will eventually take over for the original ones.  Currently, the squirrels use the arching one as a highway to get up onto the house, eating flower buds on the way and generally leaving a real mess on the deck.  I think in the long run, that the growth growing straight up from the arch should go, but that requires more equipment than I’ve got at the moment.

So, here’s a close up of the base of the tree, so you can see what I had to choose from.  Got the beginnings of a lovely thicket there.  Just below you can see what I whittled it down to.  You can also see where I nicked the bark.  Sometimes the right tool for the thickness of the branch, is the wrong tool for the tight quarters in which one is working.  I switched to a smaller saw, and clippers to finish up.

If someone would invent some sort of laser-saw that would work in very tight spaces and not need a lot of muscle, and would only cut the branch you wanted and nothing around it – that would be brilliant.  This wasn’t even a crowded space, just that the branch came out at a very tight angle from the main trunk.

Below is the finished tree.  It doesn’t show, but I did shorten one branch considerably because of damage.  There is still more to do for future years.  An OK job, but far from my best.

You may wonder why I left so many branches coming up from the base.  The idea was to leave some choice for the future.  Depending on which one does best, some or all of the others can still be taken out in future years.  I just cut down on the current competition so the branches can fill out.  It is also much easier to thin out multiple branches when they are small.  The cut branches – or some of them went inside for bouquets.  And there was still oodles of bloom left on the tree.