56 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, April 24, 1860. 
primer as to which of four buds to cut to. If yon take the point 
of a shoot, and bend it to you, there are eyes, or buds, on the 
upper side of it, also on the under side, and on the right and 
left sides as well. Now, the question is, to which of these buds 
is the shoot to be cut to; and to that science cannot direct you, 
at least, not to three of them, science being based on fundamental 
rules. If you understand it, you will never cut a side-branch, in 
any tree or bush, to a bud directly on the upper side of it; be¬ 
cause it is natural, or fundamental, that the top bud left on the 
upper side will either take the lead, or, by growing inwards, crowd 
the distance between it and the stem or trunk of the tree. A 
pruner may work to get more flow T ers, more fruit or timber, or 
lie may only want a more regular disposition of the branches; 
but none of these can be had by crowding ,t^em : still there are 
three more chances in the three buds left out of the four; but 
as science does not go by chance, it cannot tell which of the 
three buds is the right one to cut to. If you cut to a bud on the 
under-side of the shoot, that bud will make a shoot that will grow 
outwards; and if there is room in that direction, that is the 
best way for it to grow: hut, suppose there is another shoot 
which 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 bud, iu such a case, is mani¬ 
festly 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 need be ; and it is just the same on 
the right side of the branch. 
“ This teaches us to stop an aspiring leader to lessen its force 
in that direction; never to stop it to a bud on the upper side 
of it, and to be guided to the right bud 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 growl h 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, if 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 priming 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 case 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.” 
Another maxim is this—pruning will add very much to the 
size and weight of a great variety of fruit, by confining the ener¬ 
gies of the parts next to the fruit, for that very purpose, instead 
of being expended in making more wood ; but all the priming we 
can do, 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. 
The next step in pruning, after stopping buds and aspiring 
leaders, is a process which every gardener and forester puts hi 
practice every season. Let us suppose a common case : 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 are without any 
branches, then a thick head of branches, with all the large ones 
about the same size, and none of them seeming to vie with the 
leader, which is freely setting off 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 in the winter to see that all is right; he finds no 
necessity for the first step in pruning-in this tree—namely, to 
stop a too-forvvard branch, for there is none of that class. 
Then follows the second step in pruning—to see that the 
branches are not crowded in any part of the head; and the third 
step, that of cutting away the lowest tier, should never be taken 
until the second step, that of thinning the head, was accomplished. 
Therefore, when we know that too much pruning at one time 
hurts a tree, if the necessary thinning happens to require more 
than the value of two bottom tiers to be removed, the third step 
should not take place at all that season. A tree taken thus early 
should be so managed to the last day of its life as that no branch 
need be cut from the main trunk of more than one inch in 
diameter. A wound made by such a cut will be healed over by 
new wood the first season, and leave no blemish in the wood. 
In pruning the shoots of a tree it is not a matter of indifference 
where the cut is made. All wounds die back, more or less, after 
winter pruning; those of young shoots more so than those of older 
wood; therefore, when you cut close to a hud—say about the end 
of October, Nature cannot heal that wound till new wood is 
formed next June or July ; and in this long interval it is almost 
certain that this close wound will cause the wood to perish imme¬ 
diately under the bud, so that if it starts at all, it will only make a 
weak shoot, and the next bud below it will become the leader, and 
thus derange the shape of the tree at once. A Vine shoot, a 
Cherry, Currant, or Raspberry, or, indeed, any soft shoot with a 
large pith, cut in that way late in the autumn, would be certain to 
kill the bud near it. 
In summer, prune close to a hud, as in fig. 2, in order that 
there may not be any snag to prevent tjie wound healing over 
immediately; but in winter pruning, cut from a quarter of an 
inch to an inch in advance of the "bud, as in fig. 1, to prevent 
the wound from destroying it; and by making the cut on the 
same side as the bud is on, you give a greater length of living 
wood beyond the bud, without increasing the length of the snag ; 
and by cutting on the opposite side from the bud, the snag may 
be the same length as in the other case, but the living wood 
beyond the bud will be lessened, according to the angle of 
the cut. 
In all gardens and nurseries, cutting off snag3 left at the 
winter pruning forms a chief item in summer pruning.—J. 
(To be continued.) 
BABY CASTLE FLOWER GARDEN. 
The flower-garden plan published in The Cottage Gardener 
of the 3rd instant, was designed by me, and very probably 
the other plans also, which were with that subjected for your 
inspection (were I to see them I could easily recognise them 
if they are mine). These gardens were laid out b\’ me when 
acting in the capacity of foreman to Mr. Roberts, at Raby Castle, 
about sixteen years ago. The square beds from No. 36 to 42, 
■were, as Mr.Beaton rightly judged, a second addition by some one. 
