THE USE AND MISUSE OF THE PRUNING KNIFE. 



57 



fines of their gardens. Many owners desire to 

 have gardens, yet from lack of knowledge and 

 intimacy with the varying laws of Nature in each 

 individual case of the trees or shrubs, they pro- 

 ceed to work or give orders in such a way as to 

 show an utter lack of sympathy with the sub- 

 jects in hand. 



" We have seen a pear tree on the walls of a 

 house, and one who was supposed to be an ex- 

 perienced hand was set to prune it. Not only 

 was the breast-wood hard cut back but the spurs 

 were cut back too, quite irrespective of whether 

 there was fruit buds below the cut or not. This 

 as a matter of course precluded the possibility 

 of fruit the following season. Quite recently we 

 heard of the good wife of a house taking a fit of 

 gardening in her lord's absence, and pruning the 

 side shoots of the vines hard back to the main 

 rods, and that too while they were yet far from 

 mature. Possibly she had been reading about 

 the installation of the new Adam in the gentle 

 art of gardening, and had felt justified in coming 

 to the support of the new profession. There 

 are those whose conception of pruning is to 

 shear in the bushes equally on all sides, whether 

 evergreen or deciduous, so as to make them as 

 uniform as possible. There is another kind of 

 uniformity that is equally offensive to the eye, 

 and altogether objectionable. This is the practice 

 of pruning large trees all to one uniform shape, 

 not merely that straggling branches may be 

 headed back, to make the trees more compact 

 and symmetrical according to their kind, but to 

 fashion them according to one preconceived 

 ideal. When such trees are leafless they are of 

 ten strongly suggestive of scarecrows. The sys- 

 tem of pollarding trees, especially Willows, in 

 wet meadows is so common in the south that 

 many have come to look upon such artificial 

 creations as the right and proper thing. Natur- 

 ally grown trees are, however, infinitely superior 

 in every way, more graceful, more umbrageous, 

 and more handsome, whether seen from near 

 or from far in the landscape. 



"There should always be some object in prun- 

 ing, though we feel that every wielder of the 

 knife would be ready to affirm that he was guid- 



ed by that aim. If the object is that of utility 

 or ornament, the hand must be guided both by 

 reason and taste in the latter case, and at least 

 by reason in the former : otherwise there can be 

 no intelligent pruning. In the case of fruit 

 trees a considerable amount of skill and judg- 

 ment are necessary to treat each variety of tree 

 according to its natural inclination to produce 

 fruit buds at particular places of the previous 

 year's growth or otherwise. There is a consid- 

 erable amount of variation even in this respect 

 amongst apples. Trees belonging to other 

 species and genera also require sympathetic 

 treatment, and he cannot be considered a skilled 

 or expert fruit grower who has not carefully 

 studied all these peculiarities. 



"Flowering trees and shrubs require equally 

 skilled treatment to secure the best effects they 

 are capable of producing. It may be as well to 

 remember here that sub-tropical effects from 

 foliage are sometimes desired, and that in this 

 case pruning consists chiefly in cutting the 

 branches hard back so as to encourage the devel- 

 opment of rampant growth, for upon such the 

 size of the leaves depends. Large leaves, each 

 according to its kind, can only be obtained upon 

 strong young wood, and the pruner is guided 

 accordingly. When he is sent with his ladder, 

 hammer, nails and shreds to prune flowering 

 shrubs upon walls, a task has been set him that 

 is not easily accomplished, if he is to acquit 

 himself properly of the task, unless he has pre- 

 viously been a keen observer of the habits of 

 each respective species. Unless accompanied 

 and closely superintended by a skilled hand, he 

 is apt to overlook the fact that one tree may 

 flower from the wood of the previous season, it 

 may be in the spring, while another may flower 

 on the young wood produced in summer. 

 Should the present time be adopted for the 

 pruning of wall, the wielder of the knife must 

 not prune away the young shoots of Chimonan- 

 thus fragrans, Jasminum nudiflorum, Forsyth ia 

 suspensa, Prunus triloba, nor Ribes speciosum, 

 as all these flower on the wood made the pre- 

 vious summer. The first two mentioned would 

 have been in flower by this time but for the un- 



