Gardening Services Close to You in Muswell Hill

Behind the Edwardian terraces of N10 stand a good many old fruit trees - apples and pears planted when the gardens were first laid out, and plums that arrived later or seeded themselves. Most have gone years without attention, and the standard instinct of cutting everything back hard in winter happens to be exactly the wrong treatment for some of them.

Apples and pears: spurs, tips and the winter cut

Before anything is cut, it matters whether a tree fruits on short spurs along older wood or on the tips of last year's growth. Shortening every shoot on a tip-bearing variety removes the entire crop, which is why some trees produce nothing for years after a well-meant tidy-up. Winter pruning of a spur-bearer aims at an open centre, the removal of crossing and inward growth, and the shortening of leaders to a bud pointing outwards. Roughly a fifth of the canopy in one season is enough; more provokes a forest of vertical water shoots.

Plums and cherries are summer work only

Stone fruit is never pruned in winter. Silver leaf and bacterial canker both infect through open wounds and are most active in the cold, damp months, while in summer the tree seals a cut quickly and the spores are far less prevalent. Pruning between late spring and midsummer, in dry weather, with clean tools, is the whole of the precaution. A neglected plum is therefore a multi-summer project rather than something to deal with over a quiet January weekend.

Renovating a neglected apple over three winters

An old apple that has become a dense thicket is brought back gradually. The first winter removes dead, diseased and crossing wood and opens the centre enough to see through. The second thins what has regrown, keeping the best-placed replacement shoots and cutting out the vertical growth the tree threw up in response. The third refines the framework and begins to reduce height. Attempting all of it at once produces a tree that spends five years growing back defensively and fruits in none of them.

Roses, and the myth of the sharp February cut

Bush roses are cut back in late winter to an outward-facing bud, hard for vigour and lighter for restraint, with dead and spindly wood taken out at the base. That much is familiar. What is less often done is the autumn shortening of long stems on exposed plants to stop wind rocking loosening the roots over winter. Shrub roses and species roses want far less intervention than hybrid teas and are frequently ruined by being pruned as if they were the same plant.

Shrubs that flower on last year's wood

Forsythia, philadelphus, deutzia, weigela and spring-flowering spiraea all set their flower buds during the summer before they bloom. Cutting them in winter removes the display entirely, which is why an annual winter tidy leaves a garden full of healthy green shrubs that never flower. The correct timing is immediately after flowering, removing about a third of the oldest stems at the base to make room for the new growth that will carry next year's display. Summer-flowering shrubs such as buddleia and late spiraea are the opposite case and are cut in early spring.

Steep streets and getting a ladder to the back

The hill this area is built on produces gardens that step up steeply behind the house, often with a flight of steps and a retaining wall between levels. Carrying a tripod ladder or a platform to the top of that, and finding level ground to stand it on, is a real part of the job and sometimes the limiting factor on what can be pruned safely. Windfall fruit left on a path stains paving and ferments into something slippery, and lifting that needs the equipment covered under pressure washing services across Muswell Hill. Ripe fruit also draws wasps in late summer, and an established nest is a matter for Fantastic Services.

When a pruning visit is best arranged

Pruning is booked to the plant's calendar rather than to convenience, so a garden with apples, plums and spring shrubs needs more than one visit a year. Quoting works from the number and size of trees, the access and the volume of prunings, which for an old orchard remnant is considerable. Woody arisings beyond what fits in a green bin leave as their own load through North Finchley furniture collection. Clay-soil planting problems in the streets immediately north follow a different pattern, covered through garden clearance in North Finchley, and the range of recurring arrangements is set out on experienced weeding and tidy-ups.