What not to do to trees

.... or a lesson in being lazy!

At the beginning of the growing season I hired a gardener to remove a small willow tree as that was a bit beyond me.  She made short shrift of it and seemed to know what she was doing so I decided it was the moment in my life to relinquish the hard graft and the boring jobs and pay someone else to do it.

Weather permitting, she had done the chores asked of her each time she came and we have gone on OK.  Any wrong judgements - such as allowing her to cut the small box hedge with huge electric clippers which seems to have stunned it into looking very sickly - have been of my own making, so no complaints.  Retrospectively, I think those sort of hedge trimmers tend to tear rather than snip which is what the box hedge requires.

On her last visit I asked her to weed as usual.  There is always enough of that to completely fill her time but, understandably, she gets fed up with it so I try to throw in something else.  On this occasion I didn't bother to do that and assumed she would use all the time weeding and tying in and supporting and dead-heading and those sorts of things.  But no - she pruned a tree and six of the eight (?) the roses.

Trees only need pruning if you are tackling disease or they are in the wrong place and need to be kept restrained in some way.  Often is isn't something an amateur should do as you can make a right cod's ear of it.  If a tree needs 'topping' you need someone who knows what they are doing so you don't spend the rest of your lifetime looking at a deformed specimen.

Why, oh why, she thought my little amelanchier (snow berry) needed hacking back I have no idea.  It is compounded and compounded by all sorts of things - it was struggling enough and was just about getting its feet down in a north facing border at last after three years there.  You grow them for their autumn colour!  It is the main focal point from my kitchen window and where I sit in the conservatory, so I see it endlessly day on day and inwardly howl.

It is too late for me to deal with it this year which might be a good thing as my first instinct is to rip it out and start again.  I am now trying to give it next year and see what happens to its growth.  I suspect it will be as ugly as I think and will have to come out.

She also pruned the roses right back - in August!!!  Never, never prune roses in summer - they want a lot of tying in and maybe the judicious nip because they are so unruly but if you hack them now they put on a spurt of growth to try and make amends and weaken themselves just in time for the cold weather to arrive.

Even stranger - look at the photo (you can see the new red growth appearing) - she left one piece standing.  I have six climbers all 'pruned'.

The moral of the story - if you want a job done well do it yourself or don't let anyone loose on your garden without strict instructions.