Take care of your outdoor rooms before Mama Spring gets home.
What is winter good for, other than snowball fights, sipping hot chocolate near a fireplace, and going on vacation? Well, among other things, there’s hardly a better time to prune your flowering and beautiful ornamental trees.
Why is that?
Most of your outdoor plants are dormant until the ground warms above 50 degrees. They’re efficiently using the energy they stored up last year to make it through the winter. But as soon as the ground starts warming they’ll push their energy into the branches. This wakes up the energy storage and reproduction factories (aka leaves and flowers).
A good winter pruning will help your plants focus all of their spring energy into viable branches, flowers, and fruit. You’ll get a vibrant explosion of color, vigor, and scents throughout the rest of the year. A good pruning makes your trees healthier and produces more, not less, flowers over time.
Mama likes that!
You still have time before Mama Spring arrives so here are a couple tips to get the job done right:
Use hand tools — Would you let your stylist cut your beautiful locks with an electric clipper? Heck no! Likewise, use hand clippers and a sharp handsaw. If your landscaper or arborist use a chainsaw or gas pruner to prune your trees, show them the door to their truck!
Natural forms — you might like shaping your beautiful trees into lollipops, but your neighbors — and Mama Spring — are groaning. You’re not also one of those people who put down dyed mulches, are you? Trees were designed to grow into a certain beautiful shapes. Good pruning works with nature, not against it.
Mama Spring doesn’t waste her time or energy, so take care of your trees now so that once she melts away all of OMW’s mess, you can focus on the pretty little things: flowers!
[In future posts, we’ll show the tools we like and the best pruning methods, but feel free to call me for a free on-site consultation within our area: Fairfield, Westport, Weston, Wilton, New Canaan]
