What’s the Difference Between Trimming and Pruning?

We’re experiencing what some call the most wonderful time of the year. December is the time for holiday shopping, earworms, and covering artificial or chopped-down trees with sparkly ornaments sold by big stores or made by little hands. But there is more than one variety of tree trimming appropriate for El Dorado this time of year.

If you were to google tree trimming today, you would almost certainly get images of a Christmas tree. Still, the more common landscaping form of the word the rest of the year is what Divine is discussing in today’s blog, with the difference between that and pruning. Do you know your prunes from your trim from your decorations? Time to study up!

Terminology

Let’s start with definitions. In everyday speech, people tend to use the terms trimming and pruning interchangeably, but they’re not actually the same in terms of landscaping. Each is technically a different process with a particular purpose.

What is Trimming

When you trim a plant, you are giving it a general shape up. It involves shortening the ends off of all the branches. The main reason is to keep everything looking good, in the same way, you’d give yourself a haircut.

But there’s another reason to trim your plants. It also stimulates plants’ growth. Cutting off the ends of branches tells the plants to send energy to the rest of the plant, keeping it healthy.

What is Pruning?

Conversely, pruning your plants is a more deliberative process. Pruning is looking for the parts of plants that are unhealthy and removing them. Like trimming, pruning also stimulates growth by sending energy to the parts of plants that vitally need it, but pruning has another purpose.

Pruning your plants also prevents the disease from spreading. Disease prevention occurs on both a micro and macro level. Removing diseased branches prevents the disease from spreading to the rest of the tree or shrub, but you also stop the sickness from spreading to other plants. Pruning is like first aid for your plants.

But Wait, There’s More!

Finally, pruning is also first aid and preventative maintenance for your home, especially about pruning trees. That is because tree branches can be a danger to your home or the people in it. So part of pruning is removing branches likely to break off during a storm or winter snow.

What Needs to Be Trimmed & What Needs to be Pruned?

Now that you can tell a trim from a prune let’s talk about what needs which! Many plants will need both at different times and for various reasons.

Trees need pruning. You may need to trim your trees as well, depending on the species. Shrubs need to be trimmed regularly and may need pruning if they have health issues. You rarely need to trim flowers, but perennials need pruning to stay healthy.

When is the Best Time to Trim and Prune?

Divine hesitates to give you a general rule about the best time for trimming and pruning because different species have different needs, but we’re currently in the middle of the trim season. It’s usually a good idea to prune before cold weather because it helps the plants keep the energy for their core and also saves you from branch damage during a storm.

Pitfalls

Like most landscaping tasks, we only recommend you trim or prune your plants on your own if you have a lot of knowledge about the particular species you’re about to cut.

Cutting too short can kill your plants. A tree or shrub without enough greenery can’t make enough food to maintain itself.

Likewise, not cutting off enough can also be a detriment. For example, if you don’t prune your branches, you may end up with property damage during a storm. But if you don’t have the knowledge of the plants you’re pruning, you may not know what parts of your plants are diseased or likely to break off.

Schedule Regular Maintenance

The best solution to keep your trees, shrubs, and flower beds healthy is to schedule regular maintenance. When you have a company like Divine handling your landscaping, you don’t have to think about when and how to do everything because we handle everything for you.

Right now, we’re outside handling your trees while folks decorate them inside. And when you hire Divine, we’re always looking out for the best interest of your landscape.