Pruning for Flowers and Fruit

Book excerpt: The best groomed and most productive garden is easy when you know what to prune when and how your plants work. Pruning for Flowers and Fruit covers plants in cool-temperate to subtropical climates and is suitable for the home gardener, avid enthusiast as well as the nursery trade and horticultural students. It includes annuals, ornamentals, vegetables, roses, perennials and hydrangeas, and fruiting plants that can be pruned to fit in your back garden. The author shows how to choose the best plant at the nursery, prune weather damaged plants, renovate ornamental or fruiting trees and shrubs, and maintain your secateurs like a professional. Create different landscape features such as pleached avenues, design elements like hedges and the more fanciful topiary. Show off your plant’s juvenile foliage or beautiful bark, or sustainably harvest wood for carpentry or craft by following the steps on how to coppice or pollard plants. Never get your wisteria in a twist again and learn to prune with confidence following techniques that range from the most basic through to those for the most advanced espaliers.