In article ,
Ophelia wrote:


"David Hill" wrote in message
...

My only addition to Spiders advice would be
If you have a lot of heavy pruning to do spread it out over a couple of
years or so.

Really??? I am very pleased you told me that! I would almost certainly
have lumbered in and chopped them down

It's the same as when you have to cut a hedge back really hard the advice
is always cut one side one year and the other the following year.

Thank you very much, David!

There is an exception to the above. If you are pruning natural
deciduous shrubs (i.e. ones that produce multiple stems and go
back to bare stems in winter), you can cut them right down - just
not too often! That is what coppicing is, after all .... Similarly,
pruning plants that both naturally shoot from old wood and lose all
leaves in winter, you can cut them right back - again, not too often.

This can be worth doing when the plants are beyond any hope of
normal pruning! The reason for stressing that the plants are
fully deciduous is that many evergreen plants rely on their existing
leaves to fuel new shoots - ones like holly and yew will recover
from having all leaves removed, but will often be set back by a
year or so.

Some plants (like some clematis) can handle that treatment every
year, but most don't like it more than one year in three, or even
one year in ten for some of the coppiced trees.

I will be starting on the roses first. They have stopped flowering, when
would you suggest I made a start? Boy that is going to be fun I tied in
all the long branches. I described it earlier as a thicket. I do not
exaggerate.

I would wait until the light goes - say, the beginning of November.
But it is unlikely that you would harm them starting now.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.