200 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 5. 
occupies, or which will soon occupy, that space, then 
your causing a new one to grow in that direction will 
crowd that part; therefore, cutting to an under-side 
hud, in such a case, is manifestly wrong, 
Let us now take a bud on the left side of the shoot, 
and cut to it. This also may be right or wrong, as it 
happens. A leader rising from the left side of a shoot 
will grow more to the left than the shoot itself would do 
were it not stopped; and if that left side is already 
better furnished than the right side, there will be more 
crowding than needs be; and it is just the same on the 
right side of the branch. Here, then, we have got 
science and practice just matched, the one helping the 
other in equal proportions, or “value for value,” as the 
greedy hypocrite said, when he gave away his cuttings, 
with the only view of doubling his own collection. 
This teaches us to stop an aspiring leader to lessen 
j its force iu that direction; never to stop it to a bud on 
the upper side of it, and to be guided to the right hud 
to cut to by the rest of the branches; choosing the bud 
on that side where they are less crowded, and so, by 
directing a new growth to the more open part of the 
head, balancing the whole more equally. 
I put the question, which is the root and foundation 
of all pruning on this footing, because, in nine cases out 
of ten, in general pruning, it stands just as here set 
forth; though never, or but in very rare cases, in 
pruning a forest or timber tree; for exceptions, take a 
pillar rose ? If one of them, or one out of every hundred 
of them, were to be led up with one central stem, like a 
forest tree, the chances are that it would get bare at the 
bottom, some time or other; and if it did, there is no 
other shoot to fall back upon, or rather to cut back to 
furnish the feathers to the ground; therefore, the safest 
plan is to have two, three, or more leaders, for the 
centre of a pillar-rose, and, in pruning the side-branches 
from them, we meet with exceptional cases to that of not 
pruning back to a bud on the upper side of a timber 
tree. We want the pillar to rise as fast as practicable, 
after furnishing side-branches enough to form the body; 
and if we always avoided the cut to an opposite bud, 
we might have more for the body of the pillar than was 
really necessary, and not enough of upright growth 
to carry on the height in proportion. In such cases, if 
we are sure of sufficient side-branches, it is always best 
to cut back to a bud on the upper side of all the topmost 
branches. On the other hand, if we take the care of 
fruit-trees trained against something, or of flowering 
plants merely, trained the same way, and find that the 
young wood from the main branches is too strong for 
our purpose, we prune back to a bud on the under side 
of the shoot, because a shoot from such under bud is 
never so strong as one from the upper side. 
Such, then, I conceive to be the rudiment or first 
principles of pruning. The very first move in the 
process is merely to squeeze the leading bud on a twig 
or branch between the finger and thumb, without an 
external wound, the soft parts inside the bud being only 
affected by the squeeze so much as to hinder the growth 
in that direction. The second step removes the bud 
altogether, and the third involves the cutting off of a 
portion of the wood as well—the practical eye directing 
i the hand to where and to what extent the removal is to 
be made, and that the quantity to be cut oil', and the 
bud at which we must stop, must necessarily vary on 
the same branch, according to the purpose intended by 
the pruner. Another maxim is this—pruning will add 
I very much to the size and weight of a great variety of 
fruit, by confining the energies of the parts next to the 
fruit, for that very purpose, instead of being expended 
in making moie wood ; but all the pruning we can do, 
i except in very rare cases indeed, will not add one inch, 
or one ounce, to the size or weight of a tree, although 
more than half the pruners in the world believe to the 
contrary. Why, then, should timber trees be pruned 
at all? Mr. Appleby will tell us why when he comes 
to that part of his instructions to the royal forest com¬ 
missioners; and here I shall confine my observations to 
the effects that may be produced by pruning the large 
outside trees along the boundary of villa gardens—trees, 
indeed, that have been, for ages, much worse managed 
than all the trees in all the forests in the country have 
been, in this age more particularly; and they say that 
is bad enough. 
The next step in pruning, after stopping buds 
and aspiring leaders, is a process which every gar¬ 
dener and forester puts in practice every season, and, 
curiously enough, no one has ever yet thought proper 
to explain it in print, as far as my reading goes. Take 
up any book or essay on foresting, and you will find 
the first step in pruning recommends that aspiring 
leaders be stopped ; and the second rule to prune off tho 
lowest tier of branches, after a certain age, and before 
the branches are more than one inch in diameter; but 
there is a step between the two which is never omitted 
in practice—it is so difficult, however, to explain it by 
the pen, that all writers pass it by, or take it for granted 
that any one who is competent to prune at all must 
know of it without being told. Let 11 s suppose a 
common case, however: A young, healthy tree, six or 
seven feet high, is removed from the nursery, and is 
planted along the boundary line of a villa garden, where 
it is intended for a screen more than for its timber; 
and let us say that the first three feet of it from the 
ground is without any branches, then a thick head of 
branches, with all the big ones about the same size, and 
none of them seeming to vie with the leader, which is 
freely setting off in the middle without a rival—just 
such a tree as one would select out of a whole nursery 
row. When this tree begins to make a free growth after 
planting, the pruner comes round iu the winter to see 
that all is right; he finds no necessity for the first step 
iu pruniug-in this tree—namely, to stop a too forward 
branch—for there is none of that class; then, if he is 
not a practical hand at the knife he will do just what 
the book tells him—misses the second step altogether, 
and takes off the lowest tier of branches, which is 
the third step. Here he would be wrong in two 
ways: first, he is not pruning for getting clean, straight 
timber, therefore, there is no need of depriving his tree 
of its lowest branches; and secondly, he will need them 
all by-and-by for screening the garden. The common 
lot of all planting for screens is, the plants are set too 
thick, and the one soon spoils the other by over-shading, 
and all get bare at the bottom as fast as the tops rise, 
and so on they go till you see right through them, and 
then the usual means of hiding the boundary a second 
time with evergreens is had recourse to. Now, what is 
right of pruning boundary trees is right about planting 
them; they ought to be planted rather thinner, or wider 
apart, in the first instance, and in pruning them the 
branches ought to be thinned when they grow close 
together, so as to keep the one from shading the other, 
that all may live for a long time, and form a perfect 
screen ; taking off the lowest tier is of little use, and may 
do harm, by depriving you of the number of screens; it 
is the equal distribution of the branches all over the tree 
that is required, and our young tree from the nursery, 
with a fine head of branches, has now arrived at that 
stage when the growth of these branches causes them to 
be too close together, and they ought to be thinned as 
surely as a young forest plantation should be, or any 
other plantation that was planted thick at first; the 
practiced eye would see this .at once, but the most 
practical pen could not say at a distance which of the 
branches or how many of them ought to be cut off, so 
as that the head should not be crowded for another year; 
then it follows that tho second step in pruning should be 
