THE GARDEN PRIMER. 



attended nearly always with pruning proper or 

 trimming. 



3. Trimming, pruning the branches of a plant for 

 the purpose of ultimately bringing the plant to a 

 preconceived shape, or artificial form. 



Thus the branches of a lanky plant may be (i) 

 pruned to give it better growth, (2) trained to make them 

 spread in the desired direction, and, later, (3) trimmed 

 to make them conform to the shape it is desired that the 

 plant should assume, or retain. 



Plants, unlike animals, do not suffer from the shock 

 of amputation, for pruning is just that, a sort of 

 plant-surgery as it were, when it is properly done. 

 Indeed, properly done, it is an operation which greatly 

 promotes the vigor of the plant subjected to it. And 

 a little pruning every year is like the stitch in time, 

 for the destruction of an ambitious shoot as soon as it 

 starts is far easier on the tree and the gardener, too, than 

 the laborious task of sawing through a good-sized 

 limb after it has had time to mature. 



In the first place there are two things about form 

 to remember in pruning; one, applying to trees espe- 

 cially, is that leading branches must never be allowed 

 to spring from the same point on the trunk or from 

 opposite the same point is perhaps clearer while the 

 other, applicable to every sort of plant, is that, generally 

 speaking, the outer shoots or branches should be left 

 and the inner ones cut away. 



In the first instance the tree is weakened structurally 

 and will split more readily under stress of wind or ice 



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