Pruning to Restore the Secret Garden
Fifteen years ago my husband and I purchased a little cottage on the mesa in Inverness. It came with a jungle of overgrown shrubs and trees. There were probably flowers once too, but ivy had smothered anything low-growing. Neighbors told us the garden had once been a showpiece with lots of fine plants. My challenge was to try to restore something of what once was. Armed with lopping shears, a pruning saw and the energy of a new homeowner, I went on attack. I wasn’t sure that anything could be salvaged from the masses of tangled branches and dead or decrepit wood, so I just cut away lopping camellias, rhododendrons, viburnums and philadelphus (mock orange) back to a manageable height of about three or four feet from the ground.
I still have these plants and today they are some of my favorites in the garden. (The original gardener had selected attractive plants.) Over the years of working with these and other plants I’ve learned that pruning is a lot more complex than I first realized. The camellias and rhododendrons were pretty forgiving after my first hack job. I didn’t have any flowers for a couple of years, but the foliage returned in abundance allowing me to begin to shape the plants to better fit in their space. However whacking off philadelphus, viburnum or other multi-stemmed shrubs is the wrong way to go about it. Not only do you not get any flowers, but you get lots of lateral shoots called water sprouts that grow from the site of the pruning cut. These make the plant more tangled and messier than before. The better way with these shrubs is to find the oldest stems and cut these to the ground. While you’re at it you can cut some of the younger stems to the ground, too, until you’ve arrived at the size shrub you want. Then you can go back and trim some of the young stems that are too tall.
The rhododendrons and camellias have been the most fun because they are so responsive. Now if I want to take off a lot of growth on a rhododendron I look along the bark of the thicker branches to find the tiny buds and cut just above these. If I only want to shape the plant, I cut just above the last whorl of leaves. This also improves the density of the parts that have gotten too leggy.
Camellias tend to get too thick and need to be thinned out. My general rule is to prune from the inside out. Yes, that means getting inside a large camellia and removing all the dead twigs and leaves. Also look for wrong-way branches—ones that point up or hang down—and remove these. Then work from the outside to balance the bush. As you study your plants you may be able to see which branches could be cut off at the trunk and which should just be cut back to a lateral branch. A good image to guide you is to thin a camellia so a bird can fly through it. This allows air and sunlight into the interior.
Pruning guides often suggest pruning after the shrub has flowered and that is good general advice, but now is the time when you can see the shape of the shrub without so many leaves. Pruning now will sacrifice some flowers, but unless you radically cut it back the way I first did, you’ll still have plenty of flowers to enjoy come spring.