Crimes Against Shrubbery

Ah, spring, when a young gardener’s fancy turns to greening plants. The sap starts running, the leaves peek out, and the gardener fumbles for the shears and pruners.

“Pruning – The Kindest Cuts” reads the headline for a class at the community college. I pay more attention to items of botanical interest than I used to. For four months last spring and early summer, I worked part-time at a local landscape nursery. I’ve always been more interested in animals than plants, but the nursery job taught me a deeper appreciation for plants as living organisms. Although I’m certainly no expert, I know enough to know that each plant has its own characteristics and needs, and I also know that many casual gardeners pay no heed to their plants’ characteristics and needs (mea culpa). Some shrubs really love being whacked back to the ground, while others will simply never recover from such a severe pruning. Without knowing what each plant requires, gardeners will make the unkindest cuts, lopping off branches left and right and then wondering why the hydrangea never flowers. Indiscriminate pruning can be harmful and can compromise the health of a plant. Or it can be just plain ugly.

Forsythia frequently finds itself the target of overzealous pruning. Beloved for their early, vibrant yellow flowers, forsythia threaten to take over Michigan. The ubiquitous shrubs are found in every neighborhood and office park, and the occasional highway berm. Often the poor Goldilocks are shorn of their blonde tresses. Forsythias’ genes compel them to be leggy and airy, tall and expansive. Left to their own devices, forsythia do not resemble cauliflower au gratin, as these distressed shrubs outside a fast food restaurant do.



Here’s what forsythia are supposed to look like.



Would you give an Old English Sheepdog a poodle cut?

Would you make a sheepdog goosestep in precise formation with a platoon of other dogs? That’s sort of what’s happened to these plants unlucky enough to be drafted.



Now, I don’t find arbor vitae to be among the most charismatic of shrubs. They’re unassuming, quite happy concealing foundations, providing backdrop for showier plants, or adding winter interest to cemeteries. They look embarrassed here, shorn and naked from the waist down, and regimented into some redneck version of Versailles. When I drew “lollipop trees” as a child, this is exactly what I had in mind. I never thought they actually existed.

These examples of crimes against shrubbery come from fairly well-off parts of two different towns. It goes to show that this can happen anywhere. Anywhere. Even right in your own neighborhood.

Please, stop senseless shrubbery abuse. Call your landscaping professional today.

Second photo of forsythia by Bradford McKee. His article Hack Job appeared last year in Slate and inspired this post.
Other photos courtesy of my accomplice KT.