Approaches to pruning

On Sunday I pruned my apricot tree. 

There are two schools of pruning: the precision pruners and the maniacal.  The maniacal pruner goes at her target with her chosen weapon (usually secateurs but in extreme cases shears, loppers or even a saw), no thought for the season or recommended time of year for pruning, determined to take up the gauntlet that the maniacal pruner believes the offending shrub, tree or bush has laid down for her and teach the plant a lesson (the plant is obviously completely unaware of this, an innocent victim in the maniacal pruner's troubled relationship with self, others and the world). 

By way of example, friends of mine recently moved from London to their dream house in Dorset.  After an afternoon's gardening not long after they had moved in, the husband announced that he had 'tidied up' the plant growing up the outside of their picture perfect, chocolate box house.  The husband had in fact reduced the wisteria, which had hitherto lovingly covered the front of the house with its signature cascades of purple flowers, to Bonsai proportions.  (It was undoubtedly the wisteria which had sold the property to his wife, featuring heavily as it had done in the glossy marketing particulars for the property and having been in flower when they had first viewed the property.) 

The second school of pruning is the precision pruners: the precision pruner consults all gardening manuals at her disposal (of which she has a small library), schedules a date for the momentous event according to the recommended advice, conducts several site inspections prior to pruning and has a portfolio of tools available to ensure that having consulted, measured and marked, she has the correct tool in her gloved hands as is appropriate to the diameter of each branch to be cut (essential tools include secateurs, shears, loppers, chain saw, ladder, safety helmet, safety spectacles, gloves, tape measure, sealant and several of the tomes referred to above).

I pruned my roses in February.  When I did this last year, soon after I had moved from the balcony in Battersea to my current idyll and before I had cause to own a single gardening book (I am now the proud owner of an extensive collection of horticultural advice and guidance), I pruned with caution.  The roses grew back with an unexpected strength and bloomed throughout the summer.  Emboldened by last year's success (and with visions of prize blooms dancing tantalisingly before my eyes), I pruned the roses back hard this year.  My roses are shadows of their former selves, little more than a woody stump in the ground and it is difficult to believe that they will ever overcome their harsh treatment at the hands of my secateurs.  I am wracked with remorse and willing my roses to produce just one new shoot as a sign of forgiveness.

Chastened by the roses' fate, I was quick to accept that I needed to adopt a more scientific approach when the time came to prune my apricot tree.  I bought the apricot tree last year and planted it on 11 May 2010, the day the coalition government came into power (the tree planting ceremony on this auspicious date a coincidence rather than a reflection of my political persuasions).  The apricot tree is thriving: it has doubled in size, is covered with buds waiting to become blossom and the lovely people at Blackmoor Fruit Nursery, from whom I bought the tree, have assured me that in a sunny spot it should produce apricots (imagine the endless possibility of a summer of apricots: apricot tartes, apricot ice cream, white chocolate and apricot cheesecake, apricot friands, apricot compote, homemade apricot jam...).

With the horror of the roses' (near?)-death experience still fresh in my mind, I resolved to do things properly this time.  I consulted the books: Blackmoor's Fruit Growers' Handbook, my 1980 edition of the RHS Encyclopaedia of Practical Gardening-Fruit and Monty Don's The Complete Gardener, which confidently informed me that I needed to reduce the leader branch to 25cm and all other branches by half.  Armed with this knowledge, I washed and cleaned my secateurs, cycled to my local garden centre where I bought sealant (to protect the tree's open wounds from disease and insect infestation) and armed myself with a tape measure.  I then did every other conceivable job in the garden to put off the awful moment where I would have to make the first cut to my innocent tree (I felt much like I imagine a surgeon would feel doing their first operation on their own child).

At 4pm, as the last few rays of sunshine lit the afternoon sky, I could procrastinate no longer.  Following the instructions, I measured each branch, reduced it to the recommended length, and applied sealant to each open wound.  I worry that I have cut off so many buds that would have become blossom, blossom which would have become apricots.  The cut branches are in a vase on my kitchen window sill, beautiful, yet whilst they might blossom, they will never fruit.

A summer without roses or apricots will be disappointing in the extreme...