298 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 19. 
walls, that is, two-sided back boughs are stopped, from 
time to time, to prevent them spreading over to the other 
side, and front boughs the same, to keep them from 
trespassing on our own more cl mice things in front of 
them, and this stoppiug on two sides will force much of 
the growth right and left, and that will fill up the 
boundary-line much sooner and better than letting the 
trees grow in a more natural way. The only difficulty 
lies in this, the chance of having our trees look so much 
like a hedge, and that difficulty no pen can remove, 
but nothing in the world is more easy for the knife. A 
good pruner can give any form or turn to a tree, 
and still it will look as if it took that particular form 
naturally, and that is the right test for a good pruner ; 
if you can trace his handywork after the trees are all in 
leaf, depend upon it he wants a cut or two himself. A 
Spruce tree is a good pattern to go by in pruning boun¬ 
dary trees, only the tiers of branches should not be so 
regular, nor the regularity of their diminishing lengths 
upwards so apparent, still, I say this is a very good 
pattern-tree. When you first begin to thin the head of a 
young tree is the right time to think of the Spruce pat¬ 
tern, and to follow it out patiently from year to year 
There would be little difficulty in so pruning and 
training a young Oak as to make it look exactly of the 
same style of growth as a Spruce—tiers of branches at 
regular distances, and the branches getiing less and loss 
in length upwards, but there is no need for such close 
imitation; all that I want to impress on the young 
pruner is, that there is nothing in the nature of our 
deciduous trees to prevent him from giving them the 
same form as the Spruce has by nature; and, then, 
knowing he has this power, I want to teach him also 
not to make bad use of it, or to blame The Cottage 
Gardener if he does. A genial soil, and good brains, 
help to cover every brick in a fruit-wall; but the best 
brains, contending against bad soil, find it a difficult 
matter to make a decent appearance. None of this 
difficulty, however, affects our pruner on the present 
occasion; if branches come at all, he knows they must 
have space enough allowed them to expose their leaves 
to sun and light, and if more branches come and crowd 
the necessary space, he knows he must prune off the 
supernumeraries. He knows, also, that main branches 
will grow in size, and extend in length, just as trees do, 
and he prunes them from the beginning as he would 
thin a thick plantation. In course of years, he finds 
the side-branches on the main limbs require exactly the 
same kind of management as the large limbs when they 
were mere branches did at the first setting-off, that is, 
they, too, get crowded, and must be thinned, else their 
closeness, and consequent shade, will soon spoil other 
branches which he cannot well spare, and so he removes 
them as often as they interfere with his plans, so that, 
in fact, the proper thinning of the head of forest-trees, 
and all other trees, according to their natures, is the 
main and grand secret of the pruner’s art, and the last 
thing that is thought of, when we want to make a pruner 
of a country bumpkin, or of my lord Duke, with his 
thousands of acres, who, if he thinks at all on the sub¬ 
ject, is perfectly satisfied with his forester, if he, the 
said forester, knows as much as keeping down aspiring 
leaders, and cutting off a tier or two, year by year, from 
the under or lowermost boughs, but that degree of 
knowledge could be taught to a noodle in ten minutes ; 
and it is idle talk, if not altogether shameful, to rail at 
Royal Forest Commissioners for doing the very thing 
that our best books on foresting, until a very recent 
date, were teaching, and even insisting ought to be 
done. The whole thing amounts to that style of writing 
called “ teaching your grandmother.” You now perceive 
a better order of things, and you find fault with her, 
poor soul, because she did not find it out for herself 
before your first smile gladdened her very heart. 
Yes, and I say it, and I will maintain it, until the end 
of the war, that the grand secret of pruning lies in the 
thinning of the branches, first, from the main trunk of 
the tree, and afterwards from the great limbs into which 
the first branches grow in the course of years. In short, 
I hold it as a fundamental rule, that every main branch, 
or great limb, which is only the same thing, in the head 
of a tree, requires the same kind of pruning and atten¬ 
tion, after a certain age, as the trunk and head required 
at the first setting-off; and that rival branches, and 
crowded ones, ought, aud must be removed, or subdued, 
iu the one as well as in the other. A healthy tree will 
always make more shoots, and, consequently, more leaves 
than can receive the necessary light for the exercise of 
their functions; or, if tiiey do for a year or two, they 
get overshadowed after that, and the pruner must 
remove them in time, rather than allow nature to sup¬ 
press and kill them in the long run; but all that is 
necessary to know about thinning, neither science, or a 
practical pen can thoroughly teach a third party; you 
might as well try to learn a man to make a military 
cloak, or Wellington boots, except as far as general rules 
can teach. 
The Cedar of Lebanon is often the worst-managed 
tree in England, while it is young and growing very 
fast, and the best tree I know of to point to for the 
teaching of thinning heads and limbs of trees. At the 
first going-off this tree grows so slowly that the intervals 
between the tiers of branches is very little, and the 
branches themselves do not come in regular tiers, as in 
the Spruce, until the tree has grown freely in its final 
place, aud often not even then, or at auy stage of its 
growth, owing to slight variation in the seedlings, like 
those of the Scotch Fir. There is one peculiarity, 
however, in all the varieties of this Cedar, which is 
much in the favour of the pruner; it bears the knife 
more freely than any other tree, not excepting the Yew ; 
and, like the Yew, no day in the year comes amiss 
to it for pruning. I have had a great deal to do with 
young Cedars of Lebanon in my day, and I am quite 
sure of all this, and I know that one can give any kind 
of form to the tree by pruning, from the shape of a 
Currant bush to that of the Larch, or Lombardy Poplar; 
but for illustrating the subject of thinning, I shall sup¬ 
pose the Cedar of Lebanon is to be carried up as the 
Silver Fir grows—a regular set of tiers at regular dis¬ 
tances all the way up, and no small branches left 
between these tiers, only little stumps of small branches 
that were stopped early, and the usual tufts of leaves so 
common on the stem of young trees of this Cedar. A 
young Cedar of Lebanon, and a young Wistaria sinensis 
are the two most lazy plants we have, if they once take 
to being lazy; but that is not their natural way, for the 
Cedar can grow almost as fast as the Larch, and Wistaria 
faster than the Grape Vine. The reason for the slow 
growth of the Cedar is, principally, that a lot of bottom 
branches had been allowed to divide the strength and 
energy among themselves at the expense of the leader, 
and if they were allowed to stand in a free open space 
they would keep their advantage for very many years, 
spreading as far, on all sides, as the leader could rise 
upwards, and that is the reason why you see so many of 
them flat-headed. Rut cut out one-half of those bottom 
shoots, and stop the pointof the other half, and away goes 
the leader immediately; and if you were to cut off every 
one of them, the leader would go quite as fast, that I am 
quite certain of; but then the want of bottom branches in a 
young Cedar-tree would look bad, besides hindering one 
from making agood specimen of it. The best plan is to fix 
on what is to be the lowest tier, and cut all the rest into 
within four inches of the trunk; the stumps, being all 
covered with leaves, will keep alive as long as you 
please without increasing in diameter, so that when you 
come to cut them off quite close the wood will be small 
