Time soon for a haircut

Pruning is one garden topic that makes my eyes glaze over. I suspect that's because, in the first instance, pruning usually makes plants look worse, not better, and I feel as badly for them as I do for myself when I've had a particularly awful haircut. Like my hair, the foliage goes through a number of not-very-attractive stages before it once again becomes the plant's crowning glory.

So steel yourself - it's almost time to look at pruning, particularly your deciduous ornamentals. In a month or so they'll mostly be conveniently naked and you'll be able to see what you're doing. One also hopes that since they're dormant they won't notice, or if they do they won't mind.

Many new gardeners dread pruning. They think there are countless secrets to doing it "properly" and if they make one mistake the tree will be dead in a week. Honestly, it's not true. Most plants regenerate no matter how bad a haircut you give them and I have several that have eagerly re-sprouted about five minutes after being whacked off at ground level.

Our method of pruning our deciduous ornamental trees involves The Landscaper wielding the loppers and me directing. Oddly, he loses all sense of direction when faced with this task and the operation deteriorates into a lot of shouting, "Not that branch, you moron, that one", and it takes half a bottle of wine afterwards for us to make up.

Having said that, pruning is actually a reasonably commonsense affair. Ornamental trees should be pruned to remove competing branches, for fairly obvious reasons. Weeping cherries, flowering dogwoods, crabapples and the like have a tendency to send out branches in various directions and end up looking a bit like a young Rod Stewart's hair.

Put on some safety glasses and stick your head into the canopy of the tree for a good look at what's going on. There are likely to be lots of small branches that, due to lack of light when the plantis leafy, aren't contributing much to the look of it and could well be shorn. Similarly, you can eliminate branches that are growing towards the centre of the tree, and if there are two that are crossing over each other, sacrifice one of them.

Getting the outside sorted is, again, a bit like administering a decent haircut. Decide what shape you want your tree to be and visualise the outline of how it should look. Trim off anything that falls outsidethis outline.

If you want your trees to bush out, cut off the terminal buds. Each branch has one at the very end, growing outward, away from the plant. If you snip it off, the plant will set several new buds below the cut, and you'll get a nice full plant. The more you do it, the fuller your plant will become. Sadly, this does not always apply to hair.

How to tackle fruit-tree pruning

If you're pruning fruit trees it's heaps of fruit, not heaps of foliage, you're after.

One reason for pruning is to encourage a stout framework to support the weight of the fruit and resist damage to the branches.

Shaping and controlling the foliage is another. Deciduous fruit trees need plenty of light for bud formation, pollination and fruit set, so a dense canopy is not ideal.

The aim is to prune fruit trees into a vase shape for good light penetration and air movement. That will also help to keep fungal infections at bay.

And you probably want to keep your tree to a manageable height so you don't need scaffolding to get to the fruit.

If you have a few ancient, lichen-covered, gnarly old citrus trees that look as if they're on their last legs, you can try an extreme form of pruning known as skeletonising. You cut back hard into the main branches of the tree, remove all the foliage, then whitewash the branches to prevent sunburn. Give the tree a huge feed, mulch it, and you will find it reinvigorated in spring.

Whatever you're trimming, use really sharp secateurs and clean them after each tree to avoid spreading diseases.