The 'Prune-it' site
'Prune-it' is a tool for enthusiastic gardeners and garden planners. It incorporates a substantial database of hardy cultivated plants generally suitable for growing outdoors in Britain. From this:
- You can build up a catalogue of all your plants, allocating them if you wish to different areas of your garden.
- You can check when these plants should be in flower and the seasonal colour they provide - again linked to different parts of the garden.
- You can establish, without having to make constant use of your reference books, what you need to do to look after all your plants and, more importantly, when you need to do it.
- You can obtain information on the pests and diseases to which your plants could be susceptible.
- And finally, as no garden is ever complete, you can use the database to investigate new planting ideas.
Please make full use of the Menu opposite to explore these possibilities.
Registering User Information
Before using the databases underlying this site, you will need to register. This is done by submitting your First Name, your Last Name and a Username/Password. For monitoring purposes, it would also be helpful if you could provide the initial characters (only) of your Postcode.
In connection with this registration, please note that to re-enter the site on any future occasion you will need just your Last Name and your Username/Password. So, do make a note of the password!
Defining the different areas of your Garden
Before you start selecting plants, you have the option of defining (naming) the different areas of your garden – or you can decide you won’t bother and just have the one default area, 'My Garden'.
What you call the different areas - the assumption being that you will have at least two - is obviously up to you, but here are some suggestions:
| The Rockery | The Scree Bed | The Gravel Garden | The Bog Garden |
| The Back Garden | The East Garden | The Near Garden | The North Garden |
| The Front Garden | The West Garden | The Far Garden | The South Garden |
| The Shrubbery | The Rose Garden | The Formal Garden | The White Garden |
| The Herbaceous Borders | The Meadow/Wildflower Garden | ||
| I am ready to define the different areas of my garden |
Selecting your plants
To select your plants, you can work from the database full plant list, or you can use (A-Z) sub-lists, or you can select on genus.
When considering the whole garden, the use of (A-Z) sub-lists is generally likely to be the most manageable of the three options. However, where relatively few plants are involved selecting on genus might be better - should you, for example, be considering a particular group of plants (to prepare a maintenance schedule for your shrubs, say); or a particular garden area (to explore the visual impact of making plant changes in an herbaceous border, say). Selecting on genus should also prove to be the easiest way to add, amend or delete specific plant selections.
And note: You don't need to select the same plant more than once. Once a plant is selected you can go on and 'plant' it in as many areas of your garden as you like.
I am ready to select my plants
Planting them out / Moving them about
If you decided in favour of defining different areas for your garden, all the plants you have so far selected can be planted out into (allocated to) these areas. And once planted, they can be moved about, or even grubbed out!
This will lead to your being able to produce lists showing what you have planted where, what should be in flower where and when, and also to organise your plant maintenance on an area by area basis.
If you decided against defining different areas, you will have to skip this stage for now. (You will still be able to get the listings but they will cover the entire garden.) Later, if you change your mind and opt after all to split the garden into its different areas, you can come back and do your planting then.
| I want to start/continue planting out |
| I want to move some plants about |
| I need to take some plants out |
Looking after them
The choice of cultivated plants for any garden, if the plants are to do well, must to some degree reflect the garden's geographic locality and altitude, and at a more local level, its general topography, aspect and orientation - all of which impact on soil temperatures, on daylight levels, on sunlight and shade, on the effects of wind and frosts etc. Plants are also subject to the garden's soil type(s) - which affect moisture and nutrients availability. All that said, however, if those plants are to continue to do well, they must be properly looked after.
So, to ensure you can do this, the web site is designed to generate a range of Annual Plant Maintenance schedules, setting out for you the plant maintenance ideally required, January through to December, in your garden. The information is provided under three headings, Plant Cultivation, Plant Propagation and Pruning. Schedules can be generated for an individual genus, (say for Genus Rosa), for particular types of plant, (say your shrubs or your herbacious perennials), individually for each of your Garden Areas, or indeed, for the entire garden broken down by Garden Area. All in all, this facility should help you keep your plants in pretty good shape!
I am ready to obtain an Annual Plant Maintenance schedule
Checking out the results
Before you settle down to look at the results of your planting, you may feel you need to obtain a full plant listing - to ensure you have everything correctly recorded on the database and in the right Garden Areas.
Once that is done, and assuming all is well, you can start to look at the effectiveness of the planting in terms of its achieving the colour and seasonal continuity you are aiming for in each Area. Or, put another way perhaps, you can also start to find out where the gaps are (if indeed there are any), where you might want make changes, even consider some entirely new planting - which, of course, you can then evaluate using this Web site! And if you are in need of ideas, it might be worth checking out New Planting Ideas too!
| I am ready to obtain a full plant listing |
| I would like to see what is in flower, when and where |
New Planting Ideas
'No garden is ever so complete that there is no room for new plants.'
So, even on a website as dedicated as this one is to helping you record and look after the plants already in your garden, there has to be room for using the site's databases to explore new planting ideas!
To do this the site offers two start points. You can search under Garden Use, e.g. as a border feature, a windbreak, on a sunny wall, as cut flowers etc. Or, you can search on Plant Type with the option for refinement based on some basic plant characteristics, such as whether the plant is evergreen, whether it provides seasonal colour, it's leaf size, season of flowering etc. etc.
It may be that most plants will grow in most conditions. Yet to thrive, most plants need the right conditions. Thus, curiously, there is one quite important aspect of exploring new planting that has rather more to do with you than it has with the plants. Before you start your search, you really need to know your soil. So, yes, on the plant ideas listings you will have each plant's cultivation preferences!
I am ready to explore planting ideas
Pests, Diseases and Plant Disorders
Most cultivated plants are at times subject to pests, diseases or disorders (PDD). In most cases, (unfortunately not in every case), this does not amount to anything particularly serious and the plants recover. However, it is as well to be able to check such things out. So, by clicking on the button below you will be able see a 'Listing of PDD possibilities' for your plants, together with suggestions as to how you might deal with them should they occur.
In producing this listing the practice has been followed (as in most reference books) of linking PDD to plant genus. In reality, many PDD occur across plant families. What this means is that if you find serious disease in one of your plants you need to be alert to the possibility of its spreading to other plants in the same family. So, yes, the listings include plant family data!
I want to see a PDD Listing for my plants
The Horticulture of Plant Maintenance
To develop a plant maintenance programme (PMP) for a garden stocked with hardy plants, you need to know
(a) each plant's basic cultivation needs
(b) whether, and when, the plant should be 'replenished' by division
and/or
(c) whether, how and when, the plant should be pruned.
In practice this task may be somewhat easier than first appears. This is because, as a general rule, PMP is genus related rather than individual plant related; we can substitute the word 'plant' above with the word 'genus'.
However, this being horticulture, there are inevitably some exceptions to the rule. There are genus (for example Potentilla) where some species are shrubs, others are perennials; there are genus (for example Buddleja) where some species flower on current season's growth, others on previous season's growth; there are also genus (for example Berberis) where some species are evergreen while others are deciduous.
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And then, there are also those situations where the horticultural use to which a particular species is put dictates that it be treated as an exception to the rule. Typical examples would be the species of the genera Cornus and Salix grown for the winter colour of their stems; or the many shrub species grown as hedging; or those species of shrubs grown as a feature on a fence or wall. Such cases each have its own particular PMP need.
Then, there is the genus Rosa - for which, depending on type, there are nine different PMP to choose from!
Generally though, what all this means is that whatever the plant, once its genus is known, (or in the case of the exceptions, its genus sub-category), then its maintenance requirement can be established. All of which leads to the production of a PMP for the entire garden. And this is what this web site will do for you.
Site History and Caveats
This web site began life many years ago as a list, then as a database, of the plants in my garden. It's purpose was help me get on top of botanic names and more specifically to inject some discipline into my gardening, particularly pruning. Over time, the database was expanded to include plants and produce maintenance programmes for other gardens, some of which - the plants, not the gardens! - I had a vested interest in; I had purchased the plants so they needed to be properly looked after!
Then, while studying for the RHS Diploma (by now having retired and with time on my hands), I came across some students who were undertaking a Garden Design course. For this they were required to draw up plant maintenance schedules for their designs. And whereas they were finding this exercise all rather uncreative and tedious, I was rather smugly thinking "I could do this just by pressing a button". Admittedly at the time this was a slight exaggeration - my database was not extensive enough and, to be of use to anyone else, it would have to be made to operate through the Internet.
And, this is now just one of many things the site can be used for!
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The site draws on plant data from well over 400 different genus - including some wonderful but, for most garden owners, totally impractical trees. All the selected plants are fully hardy, suitable for growing outdoors virtually anywhere in Britain. This means there is no data for house plants, nor for bedding plants. Also, at least for the time being, water plants have been omitted.
When selecting the particular species/cultivars to include, I have made good use of the reference books. And, I have kept a keen eye on what's being offered for sale through nurserymen's catalogues and at some of the better garden centres. Where there have been lots of options I have tended to focus on plants which have the RHS Award of Garden Merit. Perhaps inevitably, within the 400 plus genus, some are more generously represented by different species/cultivars than are others.
For consistency, plant names and plant description data (e.g. plant size, flowering season, leaf/flower colour etc. etc.) have been taken from a single source, the 'RHS A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants'.
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I have taken great pains to be as accurate as possible with the plant data . Even so, there may still be some errors / inaccuracies. If this is the case, then there is one thing I was taught as a student that I would like to pass on; 'Plants (I was taught) don't usually bother to read books' - meaning of course, that there is no such thing as 'complete accuracy' when it comes to describing plants and plant behaviour.
Now, far be it from me to use this as an excuse for any slapdash work, but I would suggest that even if every item of data underlying this site was totally accurate vis-à-vis the reference books, then even that data might still have its limitations!
cjhw (July 2006)
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