You find and buy a tree you love. You take it home from the garden center. You plant it exactly as the experts suggest. There’s one more thing to do: Learn how to prune it.
“Apart from proper plant selection and planting, pruning is perhaps the most important thing someone can do for overall plant health,” said Paul Snyder, program assistant at Wooster’s Secrest Arboretum.
Wooster’s Secrest Arboretum is giving a workshop on an overlooked key to healthy plants, proper pruning.
“Too many people, including some so-called professionals, don’t know how to prune properly. They top trees, for example, and end up doing damage.”
Snyder will show how to avoid that damage — and help trees and shrubs look their best — in a June 8 workshop in the arboretum. The annual Summer Pruning Workshop goes from 8 a.m. to noon at the Seaman Orientation Plaza. The arboretum is part of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, 1680 Madison Ave.
The center in turn is part of The Ohio State University and its College of Food Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
Summer’s a good time to prune
“Summer pruning works well on spring-blooming trees and shrubs, as the plants will form flower buds later this season,” Snyder said. “Summer is the second-best time to do any kind of pruning, the first being late winter.”
Workshop participants will learn about pruning tool care and sharpening. Then they’ll go outside into the 115-acre arboretum, where they’ll see demonstrations of proper pruning techniques and will practice on plants including cherries, crabapples, witch-hazels, azaleas and forsythias.