Hey, Master Gardeners, remember what you learned in Master Gardener training about pruning? Yeah, me neither. But lucky for us, at least the distaff among us, a local pruning service named Yankee Clippers will teach you everything you need to know. Yankees in D.C.? Well, I guess that's because
president Elizabeth Doyle started the company in New York way back in
1994. Here's Elizabeth with one of her crew hard at work in an
extremely overgrown garden. (Growth happens!) After leaving the
business world, she taught herself the art of pruning and decided to
create a female-friendly company, with work hours ending at 2 every
afternoon so moms could be home for their kids after school. Now she
employs about 35 women, who work on their own loosey-goosey schedules
as needed, but descend en masse in groups of 6-10 to transform the
shrubs and small trees of the many Yankee Clipper clients.
Wanna be a Yankee Clipper? Well, you don't even have to be a
gardener. In fact, the less you know, the better, because Elizabeth
has her own style and likes to train with a clean slate.
And what IS the Yankee Clipper style? Leave the garden looking good,
with even the cuts cleverly hidden. (There's a technique for this; who
knew?) This is art, not plant butchery. And prune for health. That
means NO SHEARING. Learn how each plant grows so you can work with it,
not against it.
For more information I consulted the hand-out given by Mary Ellen
Fernandez, pictured here practically hidden by the killer rose she's
tackling, at a recent garden club talk. And student of pruning t
hat
I am, I read it carefully and hyper-critically and to my amazement,
agree with everything except the advice to prune spireas like
forsythias - at the base. Now this just happens to be my favorite
shrub for sun and I have oodles of them, none of which have ever been
hacked back so brutally, a treatment I'd bet my Felcos would kill the
poor things. But these ladies have probably pruned even more of them
than I have so - drumroll - maybe I'm mistaken! See how open-minded I
can be? As a last resort, of course.
And something else I learned from Mary Ellen is that even arthritic
hands like her own can prune five hours a day if the pruning tool is a
ratchet-type. No Felcos! I know; another shocker. She swears by her
Florian Ratchet-cut Pruner and on her recommendation I'll even provide the link.
But here's what I don't get. How can these ladies, with no Olympic
pentathletes or spring chickens in the bunch, do this really hard work
for FIVE STRAIGHT HOURS? Good Lord, I'd seriously considered applying
for employment myself, thinking I know my pruning and I'm a hard
worker, too. But honestly, my version of hard physical labor begins
when the sun comes up and ends about an hour later, especially in our
summers. Anyway, I'd have to unlearn everything I know, or think I
know.
So I won't be joining these fine ladies in their mission to save and
beautify the shrubs of the D.C. area after all. Taking photos and
chatting with the homeowner? No problem, even in the heat.
The Yankee Clippers can be reached by email.
y Peter Loewer. The Lyons Press, Connecticut,
2003.
