March 05, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

Pruning: art or atrocity?

by Carol Blitzer

You can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

That's how Cass Turnbull, a certified arborist, landscaper and master gardener, describes the beauty of good pruning. She'll be discussing the fine art of pruning at a slide show on Saturday, March 6, at the Lucie Stern Community Center, and demonstrating how to do it well at a pruning workshop the next day. Both events are sponsored by Canopy: Trees for Palo Alto as a way to kick off Arbor Month.

Turnbull, who runs her own landscape business in Seattle, Wash., stumbled into pruning in the 1980s. She majored in liberal arts at an experimental school -- Fairhaven College -- in Washington, then landed a job as a groundskeeper for the parks department, after undergoing government-sponsored training.

"I found out I liked physical labor," she said, adding that after 10 years with the parks department, she took a class in horticulture and discovered a real affinity for plants and pruning.

Today she runs her own landscaping business, applying what she knows about pruning and renovating other people's gardens. Recently, she wrote a book, "Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning," which will be available at the slide show for $17.

Turnbull said she finds pruning "magical. ...You can't add anything; you take things away. The closest analogy is editing an article. It's better and there's less of it, usually."

In the mid-'80s, Turnbull attended a growth seminar where they asked her to list her complaints -- then make suggestions for fixing them. Her complaint? Bad pruning. Her solution: Get some people together to form an organization to get the word out and educate the world about proper pruning techniques.

That's how Plant Amnesty was born in 1987. "It was a mental exercise that got away from me," she said with a laugh.

Today, there are more than 900 members in 46 states and four countries. According to its Web site, www.plantamnesty.org, its mission is to "end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs."

So, Turnbull has left her home state and hit the lecture circuit, spreading the word and heeding the mission of Plant Amnesty.

"I think of gardens as a puzzle to solve, how to make it look better to the homeowner," she said. "The vast majority of pruning done by homeowners and professionals isn't really pruning; it's just cutting. It's going to make things worse."

Turnbull said her class, which will be filled with slides showing lots of bad examples, is designed for the novice. She'll be contrasting pruning art with pruning malfeasance, showing the difference between topiary and inappropriate shearing, between topping and pollarding, between poodle-balling and Japanese cloud pruning.

"A lot of bad pruning is a poor imitation of a pruning art," she said.

Students will receive a free brochure adapted for the Bay Area, she said, adding that "forgiveness will be dispensed. Everybody will be absolved before the night is through."

On Sunday, Turnbull will take her expertise to the field, doing a hands-on demonstration of techniques she discussed the day before.

Although you can't kill a rose by over-pruning it, you can do some major damage to some conifers, especially juniper. "If you take off all the green stuff, it can't regenerate. You get a dead plant," she said.

But mostly, novice pruners get "wild, ugly re-growth, water sprouts or suckers" that grow back five times as fast as the original plant. Even if you take it all off, more grows back. "This is the insanity of bad pruning: It makes the problem you're trying to correct," she said.

There's hope, though, even for those who err. "Two-thirds of the trees and nine-tenths of the shrubs can be brought back to lead normal, useful lives with some rehabilitative pruning," which Turnbull also teaches, but not in this class.

Turnbull believes that doing what comes naturally is simply wrong. "Pruning is counterintuitive. People cut plants like they cut their hair and they get into trouble," she said.

Of all the forms of mal-pruning, she said tree topping isn't so prevalent in California. But, she added, "you do have some strange over-shearings and mock pollarding."

Turnbull will be fielding questions from her students, including how to deal with specific local plants. But, she added, if people have questions about certain plants, they can send away for inexpensive pamphlets through Plant Amnesty. She also has videos in English and Spanish on how to prune.

Her simplest tip for positive pruning: "Get a plant in the right place and it won't need to be pruned."

Of course, she added, there are always exceptions -- mainly roses, fruit trees and vines.

Now that her book is out -- after five years of writing, three years of rejections and three years of editing -- she's already thinking about her next project: writing the sequel, an expanded guide to pruning. "I'm pretty much a one-topic gal," she said, adding "I'm also a professional weeder. People work too hard. There are strategies to beat weeds."

Check out the book shelves at your local book store about a decade from now. Assistant editor Carol Blitzer can be e-mailed at cblitzer@paweekly.com.
What: A Show of Pruning Horrors: Pruning Art vs. Pruning Atrocity When: Saturday, March 6, 9-11 a.m. Where: Lucie Stern Community Center Ballroom, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto Cost: $15 at the door; $10 for students; space is limited. Info: Call Canopy at (650) 964-6110 or e-mail info@canopy.org.
What: Demonstration Pruning Workshop When: Sunday, March 7, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Where: Location supplied at registration. Cost: $25 advance registration; class limited to 20 people. Info: Call Canopy at (650) 964-6110 or e-mail info@canopy.org.

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