American Horticultural Society Pruning & Training
- ISBN13: 9781564583314
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Filled with brilliant before-and-after photography, it provides gardeners with complete information on how to create the garden of their dreams.Amazon.com Review
Although primarily a reference text, Pruning & Training is also a stroll through an arboretum, intertwining beautiful and descriptive photographs with explanatory text. If you’ve ever wondered how a tree, shrub, or vine was trained or formed, this book will explain every how-to for every plant that stirs your experimental side. If you’re saddled with an overgrown orchard, poorly maintained landscaping, or heavy frost damage to trees and shrubs, you can renovate them through pruning. Solid background material is provided, including growing habits (and how to take advantage of them), advice on pruning tools, and basic and specialized pruning techniques. The reference is organized by ornamental trees, fruiting trees, ornamental shrubs, soft fruits, climbing plants, and roses…. More >>
American Horticultural Society Pruning & Training
This is only book on pruning that will meet your every need as a beginning or seasoned gardener. It is a complete encyclopedia of information with many color photographs and wonderfully detailed, clear, color illustrations of techniques you may need for any pruning challenge.
Brickell and Joyce in, “Pruning and Training”, have the most complete answers to questions on how to prune almost any plant you may have, or want to have in your garden.
It covers all the basics. Then Brickell and Joyce include very detailed information for pruning Ornamental Trees, Tree Fruits, Ornamental Shrubs, Soft Fruits, Climbing Plants and Roses. Each chapter contains general information for the whole rangeof plants they’ve assigned to that category. Detailed instructions then follow for each specific plant included in each chapter category. Details include the growing areas (3-7,etc), descripttion of each plant and flower, and, how and when each should be pruned or trained. Training and pruning instructions for popular hybrids of many plants are also included.
It has become and will continue to be my pruning bible, replacing my four other books I have collected on the subject.
For many years Mr. Brickell’s “Pruning” (96 pages) was my bible. It recently occurred to me that this 20 year old book might be updated and I came to Amazon to find that it had. The new book is much more specific as to individual trees and shrubs and the horticultural information is up to date and beautifully detailed. The book also very attractive. Since woody plants are my passion, I have to say that I love this book.
Expands what most books cover in a chapter, at best, to over 300 pages with thousands of color photos and ilustrations. Sections are devoted to ornamental trees, fruit trees, shrubs, soft fruits, climbing plants, and roses. Each section gives specific techniques for pruning different varieties of plants with plant-by-plant instructions. Equal coverage for training plants into ornamental forms is detailed for most plants. I originally borrowed this book from the library and, within 1/2 hour after opening it, decided that this was one book that I had to buy for myself.
I have been dabbling with fruit trees for the last twenty years. I usually end up moving just when my trees are finally old enough to produce. This has finally changed and I have a beautiful orchard to enjoy. I went searching for some books this past Christmas so I could learn more and get the most out of my trees. I could not be happier with this book. The things I have learned about pruning and training are fascinating and they are already paying dividends. The writing is very understandable and the photos are incredible – and there are many of them. For every popular variety of fruit tree there are photos of the first three years (from planting as a single whip)showing exactly what the tree should look like in the spring and summer of years one through three and then they explain how it should be pruned thereafter for the rest of its life. They make great use of shading leaving no doubt what cuts should be made, and where. The book covers the pruning of just about anything that grows. I wish I could give it more than five stars!!!
I was extremely disappointed with this book. I had ordered it with such anticipation. I am about to purchase a few sour cherry trees and wanted to know the best methods for pruning. I looked up the appropriate section in the book. To begin, the copy is very long and wordy. You have to wade through a whole lot of unnecessary verbage to finally get to the part that you are interested in, only to find out that now you have to go to another part of the book for the answer. This book provides a separate section for each plant type, but there are many plants that are pruned by the same method…so then they make you flip back to another plant for the description. They should just show you the various styles of pruning and list which plants that each style applies to. My other complaint is the way the copy is handled. The paragraphs are long and poorly titled. They would be much better if there were headlines, numbers, outlines, bullets etc. It would make it MUCH easier for the reader to quickly find the section of interest. This is supposed to be a reference book, NOT a novel. And finally, some of the information is just plain wrong for the US market. This book was originally published in the UK, and I believe that it is probably much more accurate for that market. For example, with the sour cherry tree, it lists Colt as the most likely root stock. That root stock is not available by ANY commercial growers that I could find on the web. And I know that if it was ever available, it hasn’t been available for at least 10 years since I have other friends who have worked in the business. However, it is available in the UK. I found that some books that I already have in my library were much better on the topic. For example, I have the Rodale’s Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. It provides MUCH better descriptions of the pruning techniques. The copy is easy to follow and the pictures are easy to understand. They have accurate information on root stocks etc. (even though it is an older book) and they also provide a huge section on pest management. The AHS Pruning and Training book was a great idea gone bad. I really could have used a good reference book on pruning.