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20 August 2010
My husband and I used to live in an old 1940’s Queensland Rail railway carriage. However nostalgic this may sound, it was time to move into a new house once the termites became too numerous to fight, and a new baby was on the way! I couldn’t imagine a baby crawling on the crumbling concrete floor, or having her sleep peacefully with our resident Carpet Python in the kitchen…
It was time to move into our new home, with one unfortunate side effect – we had to leave our gardens behind. Although we still see the gardens, as we have now turned the old railway carriage into our nursery packing room, it’s still a shame to have so many beautiful plants and see so little of them. We decided to move most of the plants and re-plant them in our new gardens, which now double as gardens for mother stock plants. One of the plants, or trees really, was a Frangipani, of around 4 meters high. It’s definitely the way to start a garden, with nice tall trees to grow into it, but moving the tree was a challenge!
I needed to prune it down, not only for convenience sake as this was a really tall heavy tree, but also in the best interest for the tree. Moving plants can cause them to loose or damage a few roots, and it’s good to offset that by cutting back the foliage, or in this case the branches. Plants tend to loose moisture through their foliage, which can be contained by cutting them back a bit. Lucky for us, Fiskars has been kind enough to send us some of their tools for us to review, including secateurs, hedging shears and one of their Easy Reach Pruning Wands. The Easy Reach Pruning Wand has been brilliant for this job, as it has a very high vertical cutting reach.
Anyone who has every pruned a Frangipani tree, or taken cuttings of it, knows how messy they can be, or even dangerous if you get the caustic sap in your eyes, nose or mouth. It can also cause skin irritation in some people. Rather than standing on a ladder, close to the source of the bleeding sap, you can stand safely on the ground, away from the drip. I started to prune my Frangipani on a ladder with a pair of secateurs, but ended up with sap all down my back, so I was very happy I could finish the job with the pruning wand. The Fiskars pruning wand will also be great for pruning the tops of my Lilly Pillies and other fairly tall shrubby plants where I never ventured before as it was too high. And frankly, I’m a big sook on ladders so I’ll pick the pruning wand over the ladder any day!
The Fiskars Easy Reach Pruning Wand is really easy to use, nothing like the old fashioned rope operated style pruners – it cuts like a dream with ease. It could handle much bigger jobs than my Frangipani, which is relatively soft. Give it a go yourself or come and check my out – it’s sure to be at the front of the garden shed from now on!
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