Barn Wall Pruning Work.

Today we have been doing some pruning work along the barn wall and border. This is work that continues on from the tree pruning that we did last week.

First job was to tidy up the Ivy on the wall to the steps. The Ivy is under control so it was just a matter of trimming the side and then taking back last years growth. I don't know if you can see in the picture but there are some nice wrought iron rails above the Ivy.  

I think it makes quite a difference to the look of the place once done.

As we move along the wall there are some Dogwoods and a Pyracantha that need pruning. There are several other shrubs as well but they can't be pruned just yet as it would cut off this years flowers.

I just cut the Dogwoods back to last years cut and removed any dead or weak growth. The Pyracantha has to have a degree of training as well as a prune. There are a couple of interesting features in the wall that I don't want to cover so it has to be trained to the wall but around the obstacles. 

This year I added a loop around the statue in the wall, I think you can just make it out if you look close. I now need to get a shoot growing off to the left of that loop to balance things out. Also in this picture you can see a Euonymus to the left of the Pyracantha, this was also given a bit of a trim. As you can see I still have the Dogwood prunings to pick up and cart away as I ran out of time. The Euonymus can be grown as a shrub but as there isn't enough room for that I've trained it to grow flat against the wall. The chunk that's missing out of the left hand side is where some non gardening person decided to install a bird box. I expect it will fill in again with time.