The Rose Garden. 



The aim in thinning should be to leave those shoots which are firmest and 

 healthiest provided they are placed at nearly equal distances. Care should be taken 

 when thinning out to cut the shoots close to their base ; the wounds then heal over 

 in Summer, and the trees develop clean and perfect. If the cut is not made quite 

 close an eye at the base may burst forth and grow with extraordinary vigour at a 

 point where not wanted, and rob the other branches of their food, and produce an 

 uneven plant. Or should it not be so the wood will die back, leaving ugly stumps, 

 and sometimes introducing decay into the heart of the tree. Sear snags and stumps, 

 which are sometimes met with in old specimens, are due to the slovenly practice of 

 leaving an inch or so on the bottom of shoots which should have been cut clean out. 



Fig. 15. LONG PRUNING, Stage 2. 



When shortening in, the lowest shoots should, where practicable, be left the longest, 

 and the others may be shortened in closer and closer as we rise towards the summit of 

 the tree (Fig. 16). The centre branch will, from its position, command a free supply 

 of sap, and it is likely that it will maintain the ascendency even if of weaker growth 

 than its congeners, which as a rule we should wish it to be. Now the shoots shortened 

 closest will, cceteris paribns, produce the strongest growth, with the greatest tendency 

 to rise perpendicularly, and thus the head is formed as desired. In shortening the 

 branches we should insert the knife at b (Fig. 14), on the opposite side of the shoot to 

 that on which the bud next below is placed, and we should cut in a direction slanting 

 upwards about the eighth of an inch above the bud. While writing on pruning I am 

 reminded by a friend that in pruning, the last eye (that at the end of the shoot) should 

 point outwards, away from the root, and be preferably underneath the shoot. Care 

 should also be taken to prune back to a good bold eye, and no part of the sloping cut 



