How Tough Can You Be?

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29767, 9 March 1962, Page 6

How Tough Can You Be?

Every gardener is a pessimist—he always under-esti-mates how large his plants will become. And he is rewarded for his pessimism by a tangle of growth, causing loss of faith in gardening as' a peaceable occupation. The fault is the gardener's, but he takes it out on the poor plants, which fall under the axe in all directions.

One of the problems with this curative treatment is what to leave and what to remove. Plants which have grown up together are commonly badly shaped when thinned out Left to their own devices they may take years to fill up and produce a good shape. There are some plants which will tolerate, with more equanimity than we deserve, quite severe cutting-back as an aid to reshaping. If plants will break reasonably freely, cut-ting-back may be the best way to produce compact plants speedily. The job is done during winter months, of course, or in the case of evergreens, in early spring. Plants beyond

repair should be removed completely to make room for others. Good specimen material should be left alone, for it is often irreplaceable. Plants such as magnolias or hamamelis are worth retaining, whether good or bad in shape. They don't grow rapidly enough to be lavish in the use of the chopper. But the general run-of-the-mill plants should be checked over, and if there are any plants which break freely they should be retained in preference to those which don't. Forsythias, buddleias, hydrangeas and cistus are examples which spring quickly to mind which can be cut reasonably hard for reshaping with every anticipation of success. There are many others, some of them quite surprisingly included. Rhododendrons, for example, if rough-barked types, will break, even when cut into quite thick wood, as will camellias. They may be rather slow to refurnish, but you do get a well-shaped plant as a result. I have cut lilac into three-inch timber and had

satisfactory regrowth. When the matter of sightliness is important it is possible to spread the shapingup over two years, removing part of the plant this winter, and part next. There are a few plants which strongly object to this maltreatment. Many of the dry . region plants are examples, such as bottlebrushes, banksias, and leucospermums. They refuse to break if cut back into wood older than one year, and stubs will always remain stubs.

Few conifers will reshape well once they have gone bare at the base—one of the few examples of success is the yew, while everyone knows the result of cutting a macrocarpa hedge back into old wood for great patches die out. Ceanothus is another objector, too. The moral is simple.

Don’t overplant to start off with, but if you do, then thin with care, and with some attention to how well the plants retained will refurnish themselves.