If you look up the word ‘pruning’ it is defined as “an essential gardening skill. When you prune correctly, you encourage healthy growth and flowering (in the case of flowering plants), as well as good looks. For most shrubs and trees, it helps to prune at the right time. Some are best pruned in winter; some right after flowering”.
This week, I caught up with Ken Jackson, Parks Supervisor with the City of Chestermere, to get some valuable tips on what the parks department does to keep our parks looking amazing and also some tips that we can implement in our own yards.
Jackson explained that elm trees are only pruned in the winter months as a way of protecting it from the nasty Dutch Elm disease. Dutch Elm disease is a fungus that is spread via a pesky beetle and if a tree is affected by this fungus, it almost never survives.
Another tree that is not pruned in the spring is the Birch. “The reason we don’t prune birch in the spring is because if we prune them now they bleed and all the sap will start running. So we wait until the birch has totally leafed out usually by early to mid-June and then we prune it because then the leaves hold all the sap”, explained Jackson.
Spring is a great time to prune and clean up any ornamental grass that you may have in your yard and the city does this as well in our public spaces. “They are perennial and we tend to leave it growing tall and wild in the winter months as it adds a bit of visual interest in the parks and in your yard if you have it, but in the spring it’s good to give it a good cut and start fresh”, says Jackson.
As for pine and spruce trees, Jackson says that they don’t really need to be pruned. You want to keep any dead branches to keep them looking tidy, but the best advice is to just leave them be.
Another plant that should be left alone in the spring is lilacs. If they are pruned in the spring, they won’t bloom so you want to hold off on pruning them as soon as they are done blooming which is typically around mid to late June.
This is also a great time of year to prune your Spiraea. Spiraea plants are hardy, deciduous-leaved shrubs. The leaves are simple and usually short stalked, and are arranged in a spiralling, alternate fashion.
Jackson explains that when pruning trees you want to get rid of the three ‘D’s…dead, dying and disease and if you remove a branch off the tree that is disease, especially with black knot, that cannot go in your compost as then it will spread – so into the trash it goes. With between 5000 – 6000 trees in the parks and public areas of Chestermere, the parks department takes great pride in the maintenance and care of them.
The City of Chestermere public works yard does have bins where residents of Chestermere, no contractors, can bring their branches after they’ve pruned the trees and bushes in their yards. “We chip all of those branches and we make them into mulch that we then use in all of the city park beds, for trees and shrubs. So it’s a great service for residents because we save residents money but not buying mulch,” explained Jackson.
The bins for branch drop off are only available from April 1st to May 31st for spring clean-up but it does reopen on September 1st to October 31st for fall clean-up. “Outside of those dates people need to take their large branches to the City of Calgary landfills. Of course, smaller branches, leaves, weeds can also go in residents green compost bins from CUI”, says Jackson.
This year however, the city has a so much mulch that they’re going to be sharing with the public. “We’re going to be putting a bin of free mulch in the parking lot at John Peake Park from April 8th to May 20th. Residents can come and help themselves to some mulch and we ask that those coming to get some mulch please keep the area neat and tidy when they’re done”, added Jackson. This is a pilot program and the city says that if it is a success we could see this again. “We also accept Christmas trees from December 26th – January 15th and we also chip those into mulch as well”.
Mulch is meant to be used around trees, shrubs and perennials – not so much to be used around annual flowers. It’s good to keep your mulch piled about 2-3 inches and to not gather it up to close or high up the base of your trees.
Let’s do our part in keeping our city looking great!
