The Art of Creative Pruning

November 15, 2011

For UK-based Hobson, there is more to pruning than cropping trees and shrubs into different shapes; effective pruning creates memorable landscapes. Using examples from Europe, Asia, and the United States, he explores the various methods of shaping trees and shrubs including topiary, cloud pruning, and niwaki (Hobson studied Japanese nursery methods in Japan). While the focus of the book is more the philosophy behind these different pruning methods, Hobson includes practical tips on how to achieve the results. VERDICT Libraries already well stocked with titles such as Christopher Brickell and David Joyce's The American Horticultural Society Pruning & Training or Lewis Hill and Penelope O'Sullivan's The Pruning Answer Book will find Hobson's gorgeously illustrated, more philosophical book a good counterpart to those more nuts-and-bolts guides. Written with passion, verve, and a dash of dry wit, this title will inspire any gardener who wants to understand the how and why of creative pruning before picking up the shears and hacking off branches.--John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2011
Imaginative pruning and shaping of living plants can create landscapes, evoke far off places and memories, . . . surprise and even shock, with interconnected species resulting not in defined categories but rather a family tree, or a map of a river system of endless tributaries, flood plains . . . or . . . some vast web of interconnected strands. In smoothly flowing, evocative text, Hobson introduces recent approaches to topiary, ranging from an amateur's gravity-free South Carolina garden to the professionally developed, extraordinary topiary in the French Marqueyssac Garden, captured poetically in the early morning fog. Deciduous hedges segue from screens to architecture: arches forming gateways, buttresses creating seating bays, crenellated battlements defining fortifications, and sophisticated, bare-trunked, raised hedges elegantly lining a garden thoroughfare. Hobson presents examples of Asian aesthetics that involved microcosms of nature created without removing plants from their natural state, as with Western pruning, but instead manipulating and enhancing that natural state. A love affair with living sculpture, this coffee-table book exceeds expectations with how-to diagrams, tips on maintenance and tools, and a list of references accompanying genuinely breathtaking full-color photos.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)