It's spring, so I prune

The first few sunny, dry days, a bit of warmth—you know, the days that smell like spring—and I'm out there in the garden looking at things with a critical eye. Naturally there's plenty of clean-up to be done. Winter wind has blown leaves in from who knows where (even though I've cleaned them up time and time again), along with fir-tree debris—the ice storm seemed to have rained down not only ice but needles and small branches I'll be picking up for weeks. Then of course there's the cutting back of perennials, grasses, dead fern fronds, overgrown vines, and old sarracenia pitchers, etc, etc, etc...

I removed about 97% of the pitchers from this planting, they were brown and broken. It's so much easier to cut them just before the new ones start to grow.

Ditto here, everything old and broken was removed.

Beyond just cutting back however I find myself reaching for the secateurs and pruning saw. The Sambucus nigra (black lace elderberry)...

...and Cotunis coggygria 'Royal Purple'...

...get cut back every year, that's nothing new. After that I took a few branches off the Fatsia japonica out front. 

It's still shocking to see this bare space.

I cut a couple of branches off the Poncirus trifoliata. 

Primarily in recognition of the mailman who passes through that space. Of course I couldn't just throw them away. 

So they got a nice spot behind the driveway hellebores.

Since winter refuses to cut down the multi-trunked cordylines (first planted in 2006 but killed to the ground a couple of times, and re-sprouted—thus the multi trunks) we finally took the saw to one clump and thinned them out pretty severely ("we" because the fibrous leaves covering the trunk meant this job required more strength than I have)...

There's still the clump on the far side allowed to stay huge.

Andrew has been prodding me to let him cut the lowest three branches off Clifford, our big leaf magnolia, for years now (he's 6ft 2in, I'm 5ft 4in—we experience the garden differently). I finally acquiesced.

It makes me so sad, but he's happy (Andrew, not Clifford)
The next day I pruned branches (both large and small) from the Metapanax delaveyi.

And then I turned my critical eye to the Callistemon viridiflorus. Before pictures would have helped you to understand just how monumental this..

And this...

And this...

Resulting in this...

Is—it really feels quite amazing in person. There's light in the center of that shrub!

As well as opened up space at ground level that's just begging for new plants. Isn't that a shame (ha).

As luck would have it I also learned from a friend that Pseudopanax x 'Sabre' responds well to being pruned. I love those leaves, but three tall leggy branches with no lower leaves just looked silly.