Photo by Jess Cole.
The art of handpruning.
The art of handpruning.
When it comes to gardening, I’ve never been one for power tools. Mostly, for me, it’s a hassle to work with them. They are costly and break. Too frequently, I’ve found myself covered in gasoline, having batteries die on me just as I’m about to finish a task, or tripping over the power cord tangled at my feet. Plus, even the most polite of them are still loud, masking the bird and windsong that I am out in the garden for in the first place.
It was Suzanne Turner, prominent landscape architect, who helped me fall in love with pruning by hand.
I first started working with Turner in her Beauregard Town Gardens after she came across me and my friend Britt pouring sweat in the full sun, tediously weeding a client’s dreaded “nutgrass,” which was tightly woven into mondo grass. Turner and her firm specialize in historical and cultural landscapes. She opened my world to so many new ideas and taught me endless techniques I will hold dear for the remainder of my ever-unfolding gardening career. She has a passion and deep knowledge for the old world and what some might see as archaic techniques—one being pruning shrubs by hand.
I will never forget the day she instructed that Britt and I prune three bulbous boxwoods outside of her office, with hand pruners. She wanted us to prune a specific few inches, but it had to look natural, as though untouched. We’d whittle away, and she’d come out of the office door every now and again to say it was not pruned enough, or it did not look “natural” enough. Finally we achieved the look and size she wanted, but my hands, blistered and bloody, took days to recover. But it was with those boxwoods that a lifelong, full-blown love affair began.
What I learned from Turner is that there is artistry in the work. No pair of battery-powdered shears can ever achieve the delicate and precise cuts that come from a sharp pair of clippers and a discerning mind. She encouraged me to really understand the species I encounter.
No pair of battery-powdered shears can ever achieve the delicate and precise cuts that come from a sharp pair of clippers and a discerning mind.
To me, there is little difference in pruning a shrub than in my former studies of throwing clay vessels or drawing the human figure. The resounding theme is curves and angles. The most subtle curve can define or fragment a thrown pot, a figure drawing, an azalea, or a gardenia. You have so much power with the tiniest movement of the hand. You prompt, and then you take a step back. You can get lost when to close up. Sometimes, a fellow gardener and I will prune a shrub together—one of us deep in the branches, the other at the street or ten feet away, watching the overall picture from a distance, directing the pruner.
If I haven’t convinced you already, below, I make my hard case for the switch to handpruning, and the reasons it is superior to using power tools. All you’ll need are: hand clippers, loppers, a good, tiny handsaw (Silky saws are the best!), and a blade sharpener. All of this should set you back $100, max, and last you for years. As I write this essay, our exotic azaleas are blooming; I pray you take heed once the blooms fade and the time has come to prune these beauties.
4 Reasons to Toss the Power Tools and Hand-Prune
It causes less damage: When using shears, you are haphazardly cutting without intention or control, which can lead to split branches, sliced leaves, and erroneous cuts. Not only is it harmful to the plant, it’s completely unnatural, and rather sore on the eye. Alternatively, when hand pruning, you are in the presence of the plant longer, and through observation can note the happenings unraveling around you. You see “dead wood” that you wouldn’t normally notice, which you can then cut out. You may find pests you would otherwise overlook. You can actually see what is happening.
It fosters a relationship with the plant: Gardening is a way to connect to one's home and the natural world. When using power tools, you are rushing a semi-natural process and allowing the distraction of sound pollution. Anyone can take shears/hedgers to a plant, but when hand pruning, it’s important to observe and have an understanding of your plant’s growth patterns. You have to know its natural form. You can, of course, manipulate that form as you wish, but if you want to prune with beauty and plant-health in mind, you have to know your plant.
When making precise cuts with integrity, you not only learn from your plants, but can get creative. You can decide where you want more growth, and make that relevant cut. I love pruning asiatic azaleas very hard and low to the earth. I like to see the most subtle diagonal from ground to rounded center top, playing around with them as a large ground cover of sorts. It’s not the right way; it’s just an aesthetic I have found and experimented with. When I see shrubs cut with shears, I struggle to find the species beautiful anymore. I see monopoly and a disconnect from the plant itself.
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It is a timesaver: When you hedge plants instead of making small hand cuts, you ultimately are cutting off the natural growth regulating buds of the plant, causing an explosion of top heavy new growth. This is called the hydra effect, and it leads to tons of growth up top, preventing the sun from reaching other areas of the shrub, resulting in a leggy and less robust plant. It may be hard to believe, but pruning by hand saves time in the long run. You may spend more time in a single session with your shrub hand pruning, but the technique is so much more beneficial for the plant that you shouldn’t need to do the pruning more than once a year. Sometimes I prune asiatic azaleas, boxwoods, pittosporum, and so on only every two or three years. When using shears you, more often than not, will want to cut them back at least twice a year; more maintenance is needed when there is a hydra effect.
It is a more ecologically sound approach: An overall avoidance of power tools is less harmful to the environment, even if you mostly use battery-powered tools. As we are all learning, batteries themself are not so ecologically sound. Without the power tools, there is less pollution, less energy used, and far less noise. Power tools are intense and powerful; they move fast. A lot of critters are harmed in the process, because they do not have enough time to react to what they are encountering. Though hand tools can, of course, affect our local fauna, the sound is far less intrusive and abrupt; they hear the actions early enough to move and offer you, the gardener, space to do their maintenance.
