SIMPLY SHRUBS

Hello, and welcome to the Crown Nursery blog.

On a chilly, but bright day - 17 brave souls ventured to Crown Nursery to attend the second of our popular 'Winter Pruning' workshops.

As before, some did fruit pruning with me, and others tackled overgrown shrubs with Graeme. We looked at the fruit pruning last week, so this time I will report on the shrub pruning.

So many of us have large and overgrown shrubs in our gardens, they produce some flowers or berries, but we feel that they could be so much better. Graeme was on hand to show, that with the right cuts, even the oldest shrub can be regenerated and reinvigorated to produce better flowers and berries.

The pruning techniques fell into several different groups - those with coloured stems such as the Dogwoods and the Willows were hard pruned - the best colour being produced on the youngest stems, these were hard-pruned to encourage maximum new growth through the summer.

The second group was those that flower on the new season's growth - generally flowering after the end of June. This includes the buddleias and the lavateras - these were also hard-pruned to promote new growth that will flower later on in the year.

The next section dealt with pruning spring and early-summer flowering shrubs - these tend to flower before the end of June. Graeme only talked about these - including Forsythias, Deutzias and lots of lovely spring-flowering items. He said they must be pruned as soon as flowering has finished - pruning them now would cut off the buds and flowers for the spring and early summer.

The final section dealt with old and neglected shrubs - taking into account the previous advice, Graeme got his loppers out - always a cause for alarm - and pruned the central older wood out of a number of large unruly beasts. A light prune round the outside to shape soon had everybody agreeing how much better they looked.

One thing Graeme continually mentioned was that to get the best out of any of these pruning methods, the plants must be fed - to encourage the strong growth and flowering that is required.

An organic fertiliser such as blood fish and bone or chicken pellets was suggested as the best available.

By the end of the session, many felt much more positive in their pruning techniques - and could not wait to get back to their garden to practice on their own shrubs!!

Crown Nursery courses are a huge amount of fun, very informal and informative. We have just released our new schedule of courses for 2009 - check out the 'Courses' section on the website.

Do come to one of them - we would love to see you!!

Until next time,

Richard