Pruning is an ancient practice that dates back thousands of years. Perhaps the most ancient reference to pruning pertains to grapes, on which severe pruning was and still is practiced to increase fruit production. Most books describe pruning as an art. Few, even in recent times, approach pruning as a science. As a result, references place emphasis on the shape and form and less on how a plant responds. Concentrating on shape and form with little or no emphasis on the plant's response too often leads to butchering. There is a big difference between pruning and shearing. Good pruning techniques always take the response of the plant into consideration by making cuts that improve the plant's health. Shearing results in formal, unnatural and usually unhealthy effects. It is indiscriminate and promotes weak growth. Shearing a hedge, while attaining a desirable visual effect in a formal setting, ultimately results in a weaker, shaded-out plant. Sound reasons for pruning should start with improvement of plant health and safety. This includes removal of diseased, insect-ridden, dying, interfering and weak growth. Properly done, this can promote better flowering, higher fruit quality in fruit trees, healthy foliage and safety. Pruning to shape a plant can be legitimate, but exercise care. It is too easy to end up with a sheared plant during the shaping process. To a plant, pruning is a stimulus. While pruning has a dwarfing tendency, it stimulates growth or "awakens" otherwise resting growth points, called latent and adventitious buds, into action. These buds produce weak sucker growth. When the tip of a shoot is cut, inhibitors to the lateral buds, including latent buds, are removed. Development of latent growth thus can take place. Response, however, gradually lessens the farther you go back from the severed end. This response varies, depending upon the species of plant and certain environmental conditions. Fast-growing trees and shrubs usually respond more than slow-growing ones. In a sense, pruning deciduous shrubs is opposite to the practice employed when pruning a tree. On a tree, you prune to leave a leader to "dominate" or produce inhibitors to prevent latent bud growth. Topping does the opposite. In pruning a shrub, you normally want to encourage latent bud growth from the base only. If such pruning is done in late winter, annually, or at least as needed, heading-back of spring-flowering shrubs seldom is necessary. This type of pruning (thinning and renewal) not only maintains a healthier, more attractive plant, but allows the gardener to do the major pruning work in the less busy season, namely the winter months. see Pruning Trees

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