I 
Fig. 1. 
THEOEY AND PRACTICE OF PRUNING. 
THEOKY AND PEACTICE OF PRUNING. 
By Mr. H. BAILEY, Gardener to 6. V. Harcourt, Esq., Nuneham Park, Oxford. 
the PEAR. 
^F all our hardy fruits, there is, perhaps, none which is more generally mismanaged, with regard to 
pruning, than the Pear. In our perambulations through the country, we too generally find both 
espalier and wall trees encumbered with a thicket of long barren spurs, producing crops of most 
luxuriant breast-wood, which is annually removed, but to be succeeded by another equally useless 
growth of shoots. In most old gardens we find large Pear-trees, which are mere 
sterile incumbrances, and it has often fallen to our lot to have heard the border 
or the climate roundly abused as the cause of unproductiveness, when the main 
fault has been the injudicious treatment which the trees have received from the 
hands of the pruner. Success in obtaining fruit must, however, after all depend 
upon favourable springs for the blossoms to open and set ; but it is in the power of 
the judicious pruner always to have his trees in a productive state, just as much 
as the unskilful ones succeed in perfecting their abortions. 
We often find the Pear trained in the fan-shaped manner — a mode most ineli- 
gible for it. For wall trees there is no plan so good as horizontal training. "We 
have ourselves adopted a mode which we find answers admira- . 
bly; it is, to train a single shoot till it reaches the top of the J J 
wall, then two horizontal branches, and from these pendent jj 
equidistant branches on each side of the stem, thus (Fig. 1). I J 
We find that in all fruit trees the finest produce is yielded at / / 
the extremities of long branches, from the sap being more highly elaborated. j j 
This mode of training gives this advantage in an eminent degree, and the pendu- 
lous branches are very fruitful. Trees thus trained, and alternating with horizon- 
tally trained ones, have a most pleasing effect, both in a useful and artistic sense. 
To balance the energies of his tree must be the great aim of the pruner; he 
must endeavour to arrive at the happy medium between weakness and excessive 
vigour, by checking the strong and encouraging the weaker growths; and whatever 
the subject with which he has to do may be, he must ever bear in mind the 
importance of having no more shoots than can be fully exposed to the action of 
light : this, in our climate, is of an importance not to be overrated, seeing what a 
large proportion of dull, damp, sunless, suicidal days our summers are made up of. 
The continental gardeners, particularly the French, with 
all their advantages as to steady summers, and more genial 
suns, attach great value to reducing the amount of summer 
growth by timely pinching, or preventive pruning, and were 
the system, with root pruning;, more generally practised, 
the most happy results must follow. Having premised 
thus much, we will now proceed to explain: — firstly, the 
formation of the horizontally trained tree ; secondly, the 
mode of bearing, and management of the spurs ; thirdly, 
the pendulous or quenouille mode of training ; fourthly, 
the pyramidal or modern French mode ; these three modes 
comprising the most valuable and useful forms in which 
Pear trees are trained. 
Fig. 2 represents a one year old or maiden Pear tree, 
which it is intended to train horizontally. To effect this, 
it must be shortened at the time of winter pruning to three buds, a, a, a, one 
of which is to form the central stem, and the other two the bearing side 
branches. The middle shoot must be trained perpendicularly, and the other 
two may at first be laid at about an angle of 45°, to be brought to a right angle 
with the main stem at the next winter arrangement. The following season 
our tree will be represented by Fig. 3, and the centre shoot must again be shortened to three buds, 
leaving about a foot or fourteen inches between them and the lower branches formed in the previous 
year ; the buds not intended to grow should be rubbed off. If the central shoot grows vigorously 
another pan- of horizontal branches may be obtained by pinching it at the proper distance, at mid- 
/'. 
) / 
Fig. 2. 
Fig. 3. 
§ 
