If I have this in the wrong section, please let me know.
Even tho we've lived here a while, I recently got into gardening and taking care of our yard. I don't think any of these trees have ever been pruned, and I have no clue on how to. Any advice is appreciated!
This one is a river birch I believe, we also have another one, only about 3 ft high. It has never been trimmed either.
I have no clue what this guy is, it has some pink blooms in the spring.
Bradford Pear?
Another Bradford
here's another bradford, a volunteer maple, and two wonderful willows. Please excuse the buzz cut. I asked my husband to trim them up a little so I could enjoy sitting in the swing under them, and this is what he did. He's done it before so I know that grows back.
I have no clue what type of hydrenga this is, and if it needs prunned.
We had to bring in a lot of dirt and relevel the yard, this little guy has popped up, any ideas as to what he might be?
As you can see in most the pictures the yard is mainly weeds....we did the dirt moving around the end of june, and I knew it was just wayyyyy to hot to even try to grow grass. I've heard fall is a good time for seeding grass anyway. The yard use to have a lot of clover in it. I liked that my yard looked green almost year round because of it. Didn't much care for the bees that liked the clover though. I've heard some about dutch white clover, and microclover. Any input on them? I would also take any advice on landscaping ideas, as you can see everything had to be removed from around the house during the dirt movement, and is now very very bland :0(
Don't let pruning intimidate you. With the tree that you have pictured (or with most trees), go with the Rule of Threes. Draw imaginary lines across the tree dividing it into three equal parts (top, middle, bottom). Start pruning from the bottom up. For a birch tree, you want to clean away all the small stuff, twigs, leaves, etc. from the base of the tree up (the first, lowest third). After you've done that, step back and evaluate. Go get a cup of coffee. Come back, look it over. Walk all around it. The middle third of the tree you want to open up. Trim away the small twigs and leaves that are clogging up the center of the tree. Don't remove any big branches. Trim out anything that's dead, broken, or tangled.
Step back. Evaluate. Usually, that's about all you'll need to do for a first pruning. The top third of the tree should be untouched, in most cases, because you'll want it to be a fully, leafy canopy. Removing stuff from lower down will naturally thin and clean out the uppermost part of the tree.
