When it comes to maintaining a healthy, beautiful landscape, there’s a long to-do list involved. Every season brings with it a new list of chores that must be completed if you want to maintain your yard. From weeding to fertilizing, mowing, aerating, and more, it’s a lot to handle. One of the essential landscaping tasks that should be on your to-do list is pruning. Here’s why pruning is important for your plants and trees, and why you shouldn’t skip it. If you need a little extra help with that long list of landscaping tasks, contact our landscape contractors in Dacula.
Healthier Plants
If your trees or plants have dead or dying branches, they will continue to expend energy trying to heal those damaged limbs. This can cause the rest of the plant to lose out on essential nutrients that would help it to grow fuller and healthier. By trimming away dead or damaged branches, you allow the plants to put their energy and nutrients toward growing fresh, healthy foliage.
More Beautiful Plants
A healthy tree is a beautiful tree. So, by pruning your plants to improve their health, you’ll also be improving their appearance. Pruning at the right time of year also encourages the growth of more verdant leaves and flowers. You also won’t have any dead branches or unsightly overgrowth marring the overall appearance of your trees and shrubs.
Direct Plant Growth
Speaking of overgrowth, pruning can also allow you to direct a tree or other plant to grow in a specific way. For example, if you have a shrub that you don’t want to expand over a wide area, trimming it back encourages the plant to grow denser foliage instead of reaching its limbs outward. You’ll also be trimming the bush into a more desirable, aesthetically pleasing shape for your yard.
Another example is trimming back trees that have branches reaching over a roof or fence. These branches can cause damage if they scrape against the roof in the wind or if a storm brings the branch down on top of your home, fence, or other structure. Trimming back these branches redirects the growth and prevents property damage.
Encourage Symmetrical Growth
With proper pruning, you’ll be supporting your trees’ root systems and encouraging the growth of a strong trunk, as well as ensuring that the trees grow in a more balanced, symmetrical shape. Why does this matter? For one thing, symmetry is aesthetically pleasing, so you’ll love the look of your well-balanced trees and bushes. But more importantly, symmetrical growth helps your trees and plants resist high winds, reducing the odds of a tree being blown over during a storm.
Pruning Tips
Now that you understand the importance of pruning, it’s also important that you understand the proper way to do it. First and foremost, it is extremely important that you only prune during periods of dormancy. The exact time of year that a plant is dormant will vary based on the species, so do some research. Pruning during periods of growth will often stunt a plant’s growth and cause lasting damage.
Additionally, it is best to remove dead branches and stems from any plant as soon as you see them. This keeps the plant beautiful and encourages new growth. Beyond this, if you want to achieve optimal health and beauty for your plants and trees, contact Stoeckig Landscape Group. We can handle all of your pruning and other landscaping needs and even upgrade your yard with stone landscaping in Dacula. Contact us today to learn more about our services.