PRUNING SHRUBS 339 



properly stopped. This summer pinching is especially use- 

 ful in wet seasons, when otherwise the wood keeps growing 

 late in autumn and is caught by freezing weather in a soft 

 and sappy condition. It also discourages upward growth 

 where this is undesirable, and tends to develop fruit-buds, 

 so that shrubs and trees will bear fruit at an earlier age when 

 they are properly pinched-back. For the same reason 

 shrubs will ripen their fruit more perfectly when the 

 stronger shoots above it have been stopped. * * * 



"A young plant carefully pruned when it is set out in 

 good ground, with room enough to grow in, will sometimes 

 need, as it grows, to have interior branches cut away for 

 the admission of light and air, and the over -strong shoots 

 pinched-back in midsummer and dead wood carefully re- 

 moved. Little more will be required, as a rule, except to 

 shorten-in judiciously the flowering wood after bloom, and 

 under this treatment shrubs will develop into their best 

 form, and flower abundantly year after year." 



The important point to remember, then, in the 

 pruning of flowering shrubs is that there are two 

 great categories of shrubs as respects the time 

 and mode of flower -bearing, those flowering in 

 early spring more or less directly from winter 

 buds, and those flowering in summer or autumn 

 from buds formed that season. The methods of 

 pruning to produce a given form of bush are the 

 same in either case ; but if it is desired to head- 

 in and yet not to sacrifice the bloom, the early- 

 flowering shrubs should be cut -back just after 

 blooming rather than in winter, and the summer- 

 flowering kinds in winter (or when the plants 

 are dormant). Some of the common shrubs 



