March Talk

On Wednesday 16th March 2016, over 50 Members and guests of BRHS attended at St Peter's School in Rossett to hear a talk on Pruning from Richard Lewis, a lecturer at Glyndwr University.(This is a record number for one of our monthly talks!)

Richard was obviously very knowledgeable about his subject and covered many aspects of pruning bushes. He started with the basics of Health and Safety, covering everything from the need to warm up before starting a heavy session of gardening to Personal Protection Equipment. This potentially boring subject was approached with humour and was presented in a manner to make you think and realise that what he was saying made sense.

He then went on to explain the use of the various tools used in pruning including secateurs loppers, saws and knives. Again this was presented in a manner to make you realise that not all jobs can be completed safely using nothing more than an old pair of secateurs or loppers and brute force. He impressed on us the importance of purchasing the best equipment we can afford and keeping it well maintained.

With the help of slides of various bushes he demonstrated the techniques for pruning them for different results and impressed us that whatever you do you are unlikely to kill the plant -- PROBABLY/MAYBE!!! (Unless you cut into the dead wood of plants such as Box, Lavender, Leylandii.)

There then followed a Q&A session when he fielded a series of questions from the audience with the evening ending with tea and biscuits.

At the end of this talk many Members expressed their thanks for Richard giving them the renewed confidence to attempt to prune their own plants.