While proper pruning can improve the health and appearance of a shrub, improper pruning can weaken or deform it. More trees and shrubs are killed each year by the effects of improper pruning than by pests. The information on this page will help you learn how to prune a shrub.

While proper pruning can improve the health and appearance of a shrub, improper pruning can weaken or deform it. More trees and shrubs are killed each year by the effects of improper pruning than by pests. The information on this page will help you learn how to prune a shrub.

• Shrubs in the wild assume the natural shape that enable them to make the best use of light in the location it finds itself. This may not always be the shape that's the most aesthetically pleasing in a yard. If you understanding how a shrub goes, and how different pruning techniques affect that growth, you can alter the plant's shape, while maintain its health.

(Creative Commons photo by sterlingpr)

• Pruning removes parts of a plant that are not required or no longer healthy. Properly done, allows its plant to redirect energy to develop additional flowers, fruits, leaves, or limbs. Before you make the first cut, however, you need to understand how the plant you're pruning grows.

1. Mounding shrubs, such as evergreen azaela and spirea have this flexible stems, with small leaves. Mounding shrubs can be shaped by trimming the longest branches.
2. Cane shrubs, such as forsythia and nandina, send up new growth from the base. Cane shrubs should be thinned by cutting canes at the base.
3. Tree-like shrubs, such as rhododendron and witch hazel, have thick woody stems with clearly divided branches. These plants can generally withstand having 1/4 to 1/8 of their branches removed.

• There are two basic pruning cuts:

1. Heading cuts are done along a branch and stimulate growth from the stump, as well as from buds close to the wound. The new growth will orient in the direction of the top remaining bud.
2. Thinning cuts remove a branch at the joint, without leaving a stump. New growth will occur from existing buds only.

• When doing maintenance pruning, remove dead or diseased branches below the diseased area. Disinfect tools between each cut, using rubbing alcohol.

• Rejuvenation pruning involves removing large portions of an old overgrown plant, and then heavily fertilizing and watering the plant to stimulate new growth. Not all shrubs can tolerate this drastic treatment, and some will die. Even if the plant comes back, there will e an aesthetic impairment for several years while the new growth comes in.

• Carefully research a shrub before pruning it, so you can match the appropriate technique and level of pruning to the plant.

• 
  

• Introduction
• Step 1: Understand How the Shrub Grows
• Step 2: Pruning Cuts
• Step 3: Maintenance Pruning
• Step 4: Rejuvenation Pruning
• Conclusion