Grow your own apples, figs, plums, cherries, pears, apricots, and peaches in even the smallest backyard! Ann Ralph shows you how to cultivate small yet abundant fruit trees using a variety of specialized pruning techniques. With dozens of simple and effective strategies for keeping an ordinary fruit tree from growing too large, you’ll keep your gardening duties manageable while at the same time reaping a bountiful harvest. These little fruit trees are easy to maintain and make a lovely addition to any home landscape.

Proper pruning will keep your landscape beautiful and thriving year after year. This authoritative guide includes more than 300 step-by-step illustrations to clearly demonstrate the correct pruning procedures for a variety of trees, shrubs, hedges, vines, and flowers. Lewis Hill offers expert advice on when, how, and why each type of plant should be pruned, safety considerations, and techniques for maintaining your pruning tools. Encouraging you to get creative, Hill even shows you how to shape your own topiaries and train espaliers.

This is the grown up version of the funny little pruning book Kath Irvine cobbled together a few years ago. A bit of a cringe, in hindsight, but that little book is what got her here. That and Fern Publishing. Together they've gone over and over her writing. Every word has been weighed up. Order and structure and tense challenged. They've walked the line between tidying up her terrible grammar, and retaining her quirky ways. Pruning Fruit Trees has been a big extra to life. The house is super dusty and please don't look in the oven, but it's been worth it. Her focus is on helping beginners, but she also hopes to give experienced pruners new eyes for trees. Calm trees is her overall aim. A less is more approach to cutting with a focus on training as well as pruning. This doesn't mean wild, woolly things that need ladders compact and productive are my guiding lights.

Over the years, Japanese gardeners have fine-tuned a distinctive set of pruning techniques that coax out the essential characters of their garden trees, or niwaki. In this highly practical book, Western gardeners are encouraged to draw upon the techniques and sculpt their own garden trees to unique effect. After first discussing the principles that underpin the techniques, the author offers in-depth guidelines for shaping pines, azaleas, conifers, broadleaved evergreens, bamboos and deciduous trees. Throughout the text, step-by-step illustrations accompany the instructions, while abundant photographs and anecdotes bring the ideas surrounding niwaki vividly to life.

The subject of fruit pruning can cause much confusion, and the technical terminology and perfect looking trees in the pruning manuals can sometimes be demoralising. This guide avoids jargon, but explains pruning by illustrating how an apple tree grows and how it responds to being pruned. It covers all aspects of apple tree pruning, from forming the shape of a newly planted tree, to restoring an old tree, the reasons for winter and summer pruning, and what tools to use. The author's experience with fruit growing is in the UK, but the principles should apply to apple (and pear) trees growing in anywhere in a temperate climate.

A collection of over 350 color photos and detailed drawings describing the techniques to pruning various plants, shrubs, and trees, with advice on restoring plant health, choosing the right tool for the job, and more.