Proper pruning enhances the beauty of almost any landscape tree or shrub, while improper pruning of a plant can ruin its landscape potential.  Pruning can train a plant, maintain plant health, improve the quality of flowers and fruit, and restrict growth.

Thanks to a new training course created for Oakland Public Works gardeners, by Jerry Miller, Friends of the Gardens at Lake Merritt, and Tora Rocha, Oakland Public Works Park Supervisor, these workers are being introduced to a new set of pruning skills and practices, to ensure our Oakland parks and gardens will flourish and can look their best.

In October, twenty-eight Public Works gardeners from West, East and Downtown Oakland participated in the first of six planned horticulture training sessions focused on pruning. Tora and Jerry presented this class in the Gardens at Lake Merritt,

This initial session, “Pruning 101,” provided the Public Works team with an introduction to pruning safety, terminology, tools and current techniques, along with an in-the-garden practice session. General pruning practices such a heading and thinning, and more technical techniques such as coppicing and pleaching, are often confused even among experienced gardeners. All agreed this classroom and “hands-on” session was invaluable, with everyone enthusiastic to participate in ongoing training.  

“Cooperation between skilled citizen volunteers and dedicated city workers will ensure the long-term health and beauty of our public gardens and parks,” said Jerry Miller. 

Tora Rocha and Jerry Miller received their horticulture and pruning training from Merritt College’s highly respected Landscape Horticulture Department. 

Some Tips for Late Fall Pruning: 

• Clean up your roses.  Remove crossing branches, those with spotted or yellowed leaves and any that have outgrown the size of the bush.  Leave some hips if not unsightly to encourage dormancy. 
• Open up and debud your camellias:  Remove branches that have outgrown the envelope of the shrub or are inhibiting the view of internal flowers or a glimpse of the trunk.  Reduce the number of buds on your camellia by one-third to one-half to promote larger, longer-lasting flowers.  Where two buds grow on the same node, remove one. 
• Tame your lemons:  Remove vertical growth to encourage horizontal growth and to restrict tree height. Eliminate any growth that restricts your ability to reach inside the tree for fruit that is now developing.  Thin some fruit off branches that are too weak to carry multiple lemons. 
• Pick up your leavings.  The leaves and branches that you and nature remove from your plants this fall is not good mulch. It is more like a disease incubator.  Put it in your compost or, if woody, thorny or badly diseased, into green waste. Your waste manager will compost it for you.