By Sue Hughes, Gresham Japanese Garden Pruner

My assignment from Jim Card was to prune this Picea pungens glauca, blue spruce into pads. I’ve been reading a lot about the right and wrong way to prune a conifer into pads, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle this tree. I knew from reading that a pad was a cluster of healthy branches with evenly distributed foliage along its entire length. The opposite is lion-tailing, an effect that results from removing an excessive amount of inner laterals and branchlets, from a larger limb.

First, let me say, when you know you’re going to prune a stiff and pokey conifer like this Picea pungens glauca, ‘Montgomery’, make sure to wear clothes that won’t snag, and a hat that’s not a made of knit. Another key is long sleeves. So many times, I’ll walk over to one of my conifers to “just prune a little bit”, and by the end of the day my forearms are scratched everywhere there was skin showing.

Now back to the shaping of this tree. First I chose what’s the front. It’s when I walk in the backyard around a curve in our path, I look out across the lawn and this grouping of plants is what a person sees (above image). The backdrop is a green space, so the bed always feels spacious. In front of the blue spruce sits a Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’, Coral Bark Japanese Maple. I plan on keeping this maple this size. The shrub that I worry about is the Ninebark to the right of this shrub. It can overpower a yard if you don’t maintain it. I planted a Physocarpus Panther® Purple Ninebark for its puple leaf color and height. It anchors the end of this bed.

Looking at the shape and size of the other plants, I identified above, in the landscape surrounding this confier, I determined I wanted to reduce its size by about 20%. The shrub was so dense, piles of leaves sat on top of the branches. I spent time brushing the leaves off, moving branches around to determine where, and why the shrub grew this way—always thinking about my “pad assignment.” I also studied the shape of the branches. As I moved branches around, I noticed the branches grew out fan like. Figuring out the architecture of the branches helped me start visualizing how I was going to create space between branches and at the same time making my pads. My goal is to promote space between branches without creating too much space.

My first major cut was taking out a main branch that shot vertically from the trunk. This cut alone opened up the center of the shrub. The next cuts were a few smaller and lower branches. I kept seeing a nice curve to the left of the trunk, and wanted that curve accentuated. Once I opened up the left side, I stepped back to observe my work. I still couldn’t see the branching, so I took out a few lower branches in the front. Voila, I was presented with some beautiful branching starting to appear.

After trimming more dead branches, I worked on cleaning up overall shape of each pad. I removed foliage shooting upright, downright, and back towards the trunk so the branches elegantly flowed outward. After an hour working on it, I wasn’t satisfied with the space between branches, but sometimes you just need to stepped away for another day.

It’s a work in process, and I was able to prune again the next day. What I liked was looking at the pictures I took for this article. It was really helpful to see that I needed to create more space on the left side of the tree to compliment the wide space on the right side. I didn’t want to remove anymore main branches, so I really worked on making sure the outer branchlets were growing correctly. I shortened some, removed others so each branch was trimmed to a fan concave shape. Not super easy to achieve with such stiff branches.

One of my big mistakes I believe was when I reduce the height, I cut the main branch leaving a bare space. I think I should of left a pad on top. I hope this isn’t a major mistake that over time I can’t fix.

I won’t prune again for another year. I think I need to time to “live with it”, and I needs to watch the new growth take shape.

When you walk through Main City Park past Tsuru Island towards the entrance to Springwater Trail, is where Gresham Japanese Garden’s Resource Center is located. Now that you’re oriented, in front of the Resource sits this tree. It’s a 25-year old Shishigashira Japanese Maple. Its a beautiful tree—if only it didn’t have sun scald!

What is sun scald?

Sun scald is a freezing condition most frequently caused by reflected light off the snow during winter months. The damage in this case will appear as sunken or dead bark on the trunk of the tree, then later in the tree’s life the bark might fall away revealing dead tissue in the tree’s cambium layer. This damage will typically be found on the south west facing side of the tree’s trunk. It can be found on other sides of the tree if there is light reflection from other sources, like man-made structures or reflective rock faces. After a tree is afflicted by sun scald it becomes much more vulnerable to decay organisms. The plant will create walls around the affected area, but sometimes it is not enough to block the infections. The leaves of the tree are also affected by sun scald, particularly on a bright sunny day following a period of warm cloudy humidity. The damage to the leaves will start as bronzing of the epidermis between the veins of the leaf, and if the sunny conditions persist the tissue of the leaf will die.

What do we do now?

In the case of our Shishigashira Japanese Maple, we placed the sun scald side of the tree towards the west sun to promote growth because the sun scald damaged the branches causing the tree to be lopsided. After two years of deliberate, aesthetic pruning the tree shows very little sign of sprouting new branches on the weak damaged side. So, what do we do now with our Shishigashira Japanese Maple? We rotate to the good side!

The good side

Every tree, shrub landscape has a good side. The good side is referred to as the angle the the said material is most viewed. We will rotate the tree potted in the large clay pot so everyone can enjoy the true beauty of this tree.

Local Roots

If you didn’t know, Don Schmidt Nursery in Boring, Oregon specializes in growing maple trees! Our Shishigashira Japanese Maple originated from a with a Gresham-Ebetsu Sister City Association member, who propagated it from cuttings, gifted to a relative in Portland, and then donated to the Gresham Japanese Garden when the owners downsized. Such history in trees!

Resources:

Utah State University Forestry Ext.

Spring is a good time to prune most of the trees, shrubs, and evergreens in your yard. Unfortunately for many homeowners AND landscapers this means getting out the power shears and whacking back the bushes into balls and boxes. While the resulting “Green Meatballs” might be the norm in American landscaping, it’s not the ideal way to prune woody plants.

Besides being boringly overdone, all of that tight trimming encourages dense growth that shuts off light to all but the outer leaves and slows the drying of leaves in humid or rainy weather, which translates into more incidence of disease.

Healthier and far more interesting pruning techniques are possible. Some of them can turn a plain green bush into a work of art, and most of them take just a little know-how and willingness to try something different.

There are much better ways to prune the landscape: pollarding, coppicing, topiary, Espalier, thinning.

In Japanese landscaping you will find plant art called niwaki. Niwaki is trimming, pruning, and branch-training to create a series of rounded forms that resemble clouds. You can prune densely to create a shrub that looks to have a cluster of clouds or more open to create something that looks like green puffballs on the end of branch arms. Dense evergreens take to this technique best, i.e. boxwood, yew, privet, Japanese holly, and pine.

Another Japapese art is Garden bonsai. Most people are familiar with the Oriental plant art of bonsai in which the artist miniaturizes a tree by growing it in a shallow pot and meticulously pruning the branches and roots. Something similar can be done with in-ground plants, except you won’t be digging up the plants to prune the roots.

The idea is to try and create a unique shape, ideally by pruning to encourage the shape and direction the tree wants to take. You might end up with something that looks wind-blown or that resembles the skeleton of an animal. One of the tricks is pruning just above a bud that’s heading in the direction where you’d like the branch to go. Small deciduous trees are some of the best, such as Japanese maple, dogwood, and seven-son flower, but most evergreens are fine, too, especially pine and juniper.