Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning: What, When, Where & How to Prune for a More Beautiful Garden

I took classes at Plant Amnesty, which she founded. God rest her soul. Cassie you were one of a kind. Rest in Heaven, tell your jokes!

I love this book! I have a hard time remembering what I am supposed to do in the garden and when, but Cass Turnbull makes it easy. She groups plants into types and explains how to prune each type. This makes it much easier to remember how to treat various trees and shrubs, although there is a nice index in case you forget or want to look up something specific. She has a very fun writing style and an easygoing approach that makes you feel like the plant police aren't looking over your shoulder. Highly recommended!

I discovered Cass Turnbull's original guide several years ago through on-line research - and was amused and excited to read about her work forming Plant Amnesty, an organization with a goal of protecting plants from mal-pruing into meatballs and other boring shapes. Her guide is structured to provide a general introduction to pruning techniques, then branching out to cover different classes of plants, finally focusing in detail on many common plants with specific guidelines for pruning. This has become my pruning bible. Suffice to say that this second edition is more of the same, more plants covered, more photos and how-to illustrations, and more humorous stories. Well worth your investment! Read it, refer to it, prune by it. And learn to respect your plants by pruning them naturally!

End the senseless mutilation of trees and shrubs. Clear, concise, and with a sprinkle of good humor to boot. From PlantAmnesty (www.plantamnesty.org) founder Cass Turnbull, this pruning guide is a must for gardeners everywhere! If you can get a hold of a copy, I also recommend the out-of-print book "The Complete Guide to Landscape Design, Renovation, and Maintenance: A Practical Handbook for the Home Landscape Gardener" updated 3/21/2006: new editions of both books mentioned in this review are now available.

Cass Turnbull is to pruning and informed gardening today what Thalassa Cruso was to the 1970s and 80s - a botanical Julia Child whose depth of knowledge is matched only by her common sense and wit. In this inexpensive, indispensable book subtitled "What, When, Where & How to Prune for a More Beautiful Garden" Turnbull takes the no nonsense approach to both the inexperienced and highly skilled gardener, and with her straight forward writing explains in easy to understand terms how to make plants, bushes and trees look and feel their best. One could quibble with the paucity of illustrations, but that may just be part of Turnbulls' technique: if you are serious about learning this art of pruning, then invest the time in the reading. She has a profound respect for plants (she is the founder of PlantAmnesty based in Seattle) and encourages the fearful first-cutter to look, feel and tend to plants and their shaping needs like a caring surgeon. There are few dos and don'ts that Turnbull doesn't cover in this helpful manual. And in the end she instructs us with such wry wit and goodwill that we feel we've communed with Mother Earth! Grady Harp, January 2005

In my opinion, this is an excellent guide for beginners or experienced pruners, and represents quite a departure from the average pruning book format and formula. Pruning book authors should take heed of the fact that the information in this book is highly USABLE and approachable. Do not be deterred if you don't know who Cass Turnbull is or never heard of Sasquatch Books. This is a little gem that you will miss if you only buy your books at the local chain bookstore.Cass Turnbull has been pruning and teaching about it for probably 20 years, and the book represents the voice of all that experience and skill. Translated, that means she not only knows how to prune, but she can also teach others to do it. She started Plant Amnesty, a Seattle-based nonprofit devoted to stopping the senseless mutilation through mal-pruning of shrubs and trees. People in the Northwest know her and love her; in my opinion, she deserves to become well known in the rest of the country.Cass provides lots of details but they are very easy to understand. The book contains thorough instructions (several PAGES each) on pruning a commonly-used landscaping shrubs and vines. See the book's table of contents to find out if the plants you want to prune are included. I think the book's subtitle should be "Pruning for the Real World." I find that the key impressive feature of this book is that it integrates the theoretical "selective heading cut" and "thinning cut" type info with the real-life experience of crawling around in shrubs and deciding what to cut. In the real world, shrubs that should never be sheared are cut into geometric forms regularly, or, people get busy and neglect their shrubs and then try to figure out what to do about them.. In the real world, owners of such shrubs often don't know how to deal with the result. In the real world people make pruning errors and don't know how to fix them. Or, even though you understand how to make the cuts, you don't understand WHAT to cut and why for aesthetic improvement. The book addresses those situations, and explains how to undo pruning messes or gradually rejuvenate overgrown shrubs. The concept of the pruning budget - how much you can prune without stimulating ugly and fast regrowth -- is explained and defined for many of the shrubs in the book. By the way, Cass also has a sense of humor which is amply displayed in the text and the illustrations. This subject doesn't have to be dry and boring! The biggest mystery for me of pruning an unknown shrub is "How will it respond?" It's like a dark tunnel with no light at the end when you don't know from firsthand experience what will happen when you cut a branch off. Quirks of individual shrubs are explained (squiggly regrowth on rhododendrons, the tendency of dogwood and Viburnum to sucker/water sprout very easily). Problems you will encounter and decisions you will have to make are covered, and improving the way a shrub looks without drastically cutting it ba