Cass Turnbull’s Guide to Pruning: What, When, Where, & How to Prune for a More Beautiful Garden

The gardening world’s favorite expert on pruning offers a comprehensive guide full of tips and tricks on how to prune your trees, shrubs, and other plants so they grow to be healthy and beautiful.

Covering 160 plants with clear instructions and illustrations, Cass Turnbull will show you exactly how to prune any plant in your garden. This third edition of Cass Turnbull’s Guide to Pruning covers more than twenty additional plants in three new chapters. Includes all the basic pruning techniques, plus specific advice on mounding-habit shrubs, cane-growing shrubs, tree-like shrubs, vines, trees, groundcovers, fruit-bearers, native plants, and more. The result is the definitive, time-tested guide for the home gardener with friendly, expert advice.

Cass Turnbull founded Seattle’s PlantAmnesty, whose mission is ＂to end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs caused by mal-pruning.＂ Here are Cass’ ten commandments for preventing such gardening sins:

The Ten Gardener Commandments
1. Thou shalt not shear thy bush.
2. Thou shalt not top thy tree.
3. Thou shalt not plant thy sun-lover in the shade, nor thy shade-lover in the sun.
4. Thou shalt mulch.
5. Thou shalt not leave stubs.
6. Thou shalt not flush cut, neither shalt thou paint wounds.
7. Thou shalt not cover up the base of thy plant, or thy tree, or thy shrub. Neither with mulch, nor with soil, nor with any landscape material.
8. Thou shalt cut circling/girdling roots.
9. Thou shalt not compact the root zone of thy tree, nor trench near the trunk of thy tree.
10. Thou shalt not weed-whip the trunk of thy tree, nor bash it with thine mower, nor leave anything tied on thy tree or the branches of thy tree, as is done in the land of the philistines.

Cass Turnbull has been a professional gardener for 20 years. After seeing so many ruined trees and shrubs in her clients’ gardens, she founded PlantAmnesty with the mission to teach gardeners (and so-called professional arborists) about the particulars of proper pruning. She has long been the humorous voice of PlantAmnesty through their regular newsletter. She lives in Seattle and lectures around the country on pruning.