Trimming a Maple

Trimming tips from our very own Stephanie Lin

To start, I learned to trim maples as a gardener working in Santa Cruz, CA, from 2011-2013. I learned from a lifelong gardener named Michael, who learned from his teacher, Frank. We pruned and sculpted shrubs and trees along the Central Coast, some of which had been shaped year after year for multiple generations. One beautiful wisteria, for example, one that we pruned twice a year, had been maintained for 40 years that way. It was on a property designed by one of the first landscape modernists, James Rose, who in turn was heavily influenced by the Japanese Gardens he visited postwar in the 1940s.

Here are some principles when pruning a maple:

• Allow for unplanned movement in the form- embrace mistakes as opportunities, meant-to-be conditions to be followed by new patterns.

• Create space between to breathe- how does your eye move across and interact with the tree, moving from branch to branch?

• Observe progress from multiple points of view- stand back and reassess, then go back in. come back out to see it from a different angle, repeat.