Customer Reviews

The Pruning Specialist: The Essential Guide to Caring for Shrubs, Trees, Climbers, Hedges, Conifers, Roses and Fruit Trees (Specialist Series)

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I purchased this book to learn about how to prune my fruit trees. While I have an upright peach, this book tells how to train a peach tree as an espalier. Even those directions were not as good as the ones in The Complete Book of Topiary by Barbara Gallup and Deborah Reich. I also have an upright apple tree. He only talks about how to prune a bush apple. I have never heard of a bush apple. The book costs $9.95 and would cost $3.99 plus postage to return.

I thought this was an excellent introduction to pruning and quite comprehensive for its brevity. I liked that it was on the shorter side and was thoughtfully divided into categories, devoting about a page to each type of shrub or tree. I just needed a quick reference to glance at to guide me in pruning my climbing rose and plum tree. As to the previous review's complaints: the book says the most common shape apple trees are pruned is in a bush, which is a tree but shorter. Its easy to infer from the text and pictures that you use the same techniques on a taller tree. In regards to the peach tree pruning, it does give details on training it as an espalier, but it does preface this by saying pruning it as a tree just takes more space and "less exacting pruning." Which again, says to me, prune it like we're about to describe, but just in the shape of a tree, not an espalier. It does neglect citrus trees, but I assume this is because I've read citrus does not generally need or like pruning.