FALL 2024 NEWSLETTER

President’s Message

Hello and welcome to our Fall Newsletter. 🍂🍁🍂

The APA/NAJGA Oakland Regional Garden Tour and Pruning Workshop happened a couple of weeks ago, and it was a truly exceptional learning experience. I am deeply grateful to the instructors, Hiroaki Eto, Bill Castellon, and Avram Dalton, as well as Jeanette Schelin and Marisa Rodriguez of NAJGA, our APA volunteers Maryann Lewis, Allison Levin, Dina Blackwell, Diana Chamberlain, Barb Eaton, Evelyn Borchert, Kaori Moro and Ann Owen, and of course everyone who attended—some traveling from far and wide. Everyone's participation made a truly rich experience for us all. We very much hope to create more hands-on workshops in the future—not only in the Bay Area, but also in other parts of the country, as well.

Those of you who traveled many miles to attend expressed a wish to be able to connect with other pruners in your areas, and future workshops might be a great way to foster that. Do you know of a community or garden—private or public—with lots of plant material that needs pruning and that would accept having a professional workshop there? Let us know!

Looking forward to the next workshop!

Lara Miranda

APA Certified Aesthetic Pruner® #65
President, Aesthetic Pruners Association
510.658.3438

Feature Article

Quick Pruner Sharpening in the Field

Jeff Becerra, APA Board Member at Large

There’s an old adage in woodworking that a sharp tool is dangerous, but a dull tool is even more so. A dull tool means less control. For us tree pruners, in addition to safety, we need to be concerned with minimizing damage to the tree by getting the smoothest cut possible.

Honing often is the best approach to keeping blades sharp and to avoid having to refurbish a badly dulled blade. It can be a pretty quick operation once you’ve done it a few times.

Using an up and down motion, move the sharpening tool across the plane of the blade, keeping consistent with the blade angle you previously found. This should be done with light pressure. Let the tool do the work rather than cranking down hard. 

I usually do 10 to 20 up and down strokes with the coarse side of the sharpener, then repeat at the same angle with the fine grit side. If you sharpen your tools often, you may just need to use the fine grit side.

Most often you can see a difference in your blade as the sharpening will remove some steel and clean the edge of the blade off in the process.

The blade at right has been sharpened. Note the clean steel blade edge compared to the photo at left.

That’s it! This will take less than a minute when you’ve gotten used to it. Have a different approach that works for you? Post about it in the forum at https://www.aestheticprunersassociation.org/member-forum.

Feature Article

Tarps Make It Easy

Nicki LaPlante, CAP #56

I typically work by myself, so I try to make efficient use of my energy on the jobsite.  One tool that I use to create short work of several tasks is the simple tarp.

Using a flat bedsheet as a drop cloth is a great option for quick cleanup. One can then carefully roll or fold the tarp and shape it to funnel material into a larger receptacle for more secure transport.

Collapsible bins can become packed so full that it’s difficult to fit them into a fixed-height space. Removing material to make sure the bin fits into the truck can be discouraging.  This is where using the amoeba-like properties of a tarp can really save the day. The tarps on the left are carrying at least as much material as the blue collapsible bin had.

Some projects inherently create a tangled pile of long branches. This can be discouraging when it is time to unload the trailer at the end of the day. The branches have all been neatly loaded, but when one needs to move them to the debris pile, it can be very difficult to grab an armful and just walk away. They tend to get interwoven and it becomes quite a challenge to grab only the pieces you want. The way one can avoid this aggravating mess is to put a tarp to task!  Trimmings collected in a tarp will stay tidy and not litter leaves and fruit in a trail from one location to another.

I suggest testing bundles while creating the piles to make sure they’re not so heavy that you can’t then lift the neat packages into your vehicle. I’ve had to overfill these parcels a few times to learn that several small bundles will transport as much material as one giant bundle, with far less effort to drag and lift. Also, a small bundle is more easily manipulated once in the vehicle.  If the total pile exceeds the clearance of a fixed height (the tonneau cover in this scenario), the top bundle can be flipped to leave the open side facing down. Secured with a few straps across the top of the pile, the load is now legally secured and ready to hit the road.

If there’s a spot for trimmings to be left on site, a tarp makes a great sled. It’s physically more efficient to drag a certain weight of trimmings than to either carry them in a bucket or to lift them, load them into a wheelbarrow, and then handle them again. I tie one end of my cloth and then grab the open end’s corners and off I go!

With a compact quantity of trimmings, one can really wrap a neat package with a light cotton tarp. This sheet is tied corner to corner, then end to end, and finally the two lengths are secured together. This creates a bundle that can easily be carried by the little handle created.  These compact bundles are also great for handling B&B shrubs, stone, and other dense objects that don’t always have good handholds.

Materials
There is a wide selection of materials to use for garden tarps. There are pros and cons to each option:

Woven plastic  
• Pro: water-resistant, good option for laying out when the ground is damp as it will not soak up moisture and become heavy and wet.
• Con: difficult to tie knots in; not very easy to shape around/over objects; can be large to store; can be lifted from placement by moderate to heavy wind.

Lightweight cotton (flat bedsheet)
• Pro: lightweight, thus nice for covering delicate plants if using it as a drop cloth; readily available; easy to wash; easy to ball up or pack down small; very easy to drape around objects.
• Con: impossible to use in windy conditions; tears easily if dragging across solid or textured surfaces; absorbs water quickly if set out on wet surfaces or gets rained on; can quickly grow mildew if put away wet.

Heavy cotton (painters’ drop cloths, duck cotton)
• Pro: drapes over sturdy plants most quickly of the three options; more durable than light cotton to drag across paved surfaces; stays in place in moderate to heavy wind.
• Con: becomes extremely heavy when wet, absorbs moisture quickly; can very quickly grow mildew if put away wet.

It would be great to hear some of the ways you make management, collection, and transportation of your garden waste more efficient.  Please share your creative ideas in the forum with us!

APA Upcoming Events

APA Annual Meeting

Join fellow members to network and discuss the APA’s exciting plans for 2025!

*Save the date*

Sunday, January 26th, 2024
10:00am - 12:30pm PST

On Zoom

APA Members-only Videos

Members can access video links to past APA presentations!

Such as: Tree Talks, APA Annual Meeting talks, and Pruning Intensive talks. Links are available on the APA website Resources page.

Pruning Wisdom from Members

"Which pruning tools do you find indispensable?  Do you use any unusual tool(s) that you think others may be interested to know about?"

I've talked about some of my favorite pruning tools in a previous newsletter, and thought it'd be fun to share some of the "pruning support" tools I use. Less obvious and less glamorous, maybe, but they make me a happier pruner. These are some of my favorites, many of which were introduced to me by fellow pruners:

• NRS straps - great for securing a ladder to a vehicle, or to a tree for stability.

• Wooden blocks - for leveling a ladder on uneven terrain. Scrap pieces of 2x6s work perfectly.

• Rust eraser - for removing crusty crud, stubborn sap or actual rust from pruning tools (or cooking ranges). Available at Hida Tool, Niwaki, sometimes even Daiso if you're lucky.

• Bandaids - for the inevitable mishap with a pruning saw or thorny shrub.

• Alcohol wipes - to quickly sanitize tools on the spot, or yourself (see above).

• Leather gauntlet gloves - for pruning things like bougainvillea. Also great for hauling out debris from the truck bed.

• Duluth Trading apron dress - lots of handy pockets, and solves the problem of shirt bottom flapping around my tool belt. Inspired by Dennis Makishima's ubiquitous coveralls but arguably better (especially for women).

• Niwaki pruning sheet - lighter, more flexible and breathable than a standard tarp, great for covering woody debris in a truck bed since it won't catch the wind.

I started pruning over 20 years ago, and while I have tried out a variety of tools, my go-to tools are simple: Felco pruners (6) and the Silky Gomtaro 240mm saw. My other most frequently used tools are the Silky Ibuki 390mm curved saw, heavy duty ARS long reach pruners, and a Gyokucho 150mm fruit saw. I keep ARS hand pruners as a backup and for a few years would switch between Felcos and ARS pruners, but I’ve never been able to get used to the hard metal grinding sensation that a cut with ARS pruners sends up the arm, as well as the wide spread of the handles. My favorite saws were the Gyokucho Razorsaws but they’re not made anymore, and on the most similar ones available now, the Fugaku Sentei, I find the one bolt holding the handle on (instead of the two the Rasorsaws had) frequently loosens. The rougher cut of the Silky has taken some getting used to, but I appreciate the durability of the blade and the overall feel of the saw.

A tool that has become indispensable is a Makita reciprocating saw. For years I prided myself on using only hand tools; however, the reciprocating saw has proved very useful. I mostly use it to cut up branches I am hauling away to speed up the job and save my arm and shoulder, but I also use it sometimes to make an initial rough cut or take weight off of bigger branches. (I always make the final cut with a hand saw.) Its lighter weight and smaller size makes it easier and safer for me to use than a battery powered chainsaw. This tool might not be useful for everyone, but I work on a lot of older fruit trees, so the size and volume of branches can be significant; the reciprocating saw makes my work more efficient and saves my energy on jobs that can be physically exhausting.

Over time, I have noticed that I can get important information from the way I use tools. This spring I realized that I was going out of my way to avoid using my 10 ft. Hasegawa ladder. I was trying to do more with a pole pruner and pole saw from my 8 ft. ladder. The 10 ft. ladder was just too heavy for me to move easily—it felt awkward to move around the tree and used up a lot of energy just in positioning it, so I didn’t even want to get it off the truck. I decided it was time to shell out for one of the lighter Hida ladders, and the difference is amazing. I have gone through years in my pruning work when I favored certain tools, and then have shifted to favoring other ones. Some of it has to do with physical strength or strain on different muscles and body parts; these days I notice I prefer the motion of making a saw cut to the motion of closing pruners. I take note of this as an indication that I may need to tend to my hands and wrists through stretching and strengthening as well as giving them a bit of a break by favoring the saw. I also notice how I feel about using certain tools as an indication of what kind of jobs I take on. Years ago I realized I didn’t especially like using a pole saw, so I started turning down jobs that would require a lot of pole saw work (or found another way to make the cuts). And recently I found myself wishing that I had more jobs where I could use scissors, and I’m using it as a push to get more jobs with finer detail work.

I love hearing from other pruners about the tools they use. And right now I am especially interested in the question of how you organize, carry and store your tools—I hope you’ll post in the forum if you have something to share!

Jocelyn's bag of tools, gear and supplements in no specific order:

• Climbing helmet, safety/prescription sunglasses, assorted gloves depending on the plants. I like the green bamboo lightweight gloves for climbing as they grab onto the ropes well and I can actually tie a knot with them on.

In case you don't wear sunglasses when you work, please consider wearing them, and preferably safety glasses. Our eyes are important and need protection from the sun. All manner of issues may arise without wearing them, especially if you plan to grow older.

• In my mind’s eye, I wear a pair of magical glasses that...…

• allow me to look for the good, and the rest will take care of itself

• help me notice the little things like lichen, a pretty bug, or a column of cork bark

• illuminate how much duff and plant litter are nurturing the soil around the tree

• help me take note of the line of the tree and its unique character.

• Hand lens with a light to boot, for close inspection of friendly and not so friendly microorganisms. 

• Of course my tool belt, a second-hand one from a thrift store with ARS hand pruners, silky saw, and a small Gerber multi tool (it is about half as large as your hand pruners) in a handy case with pliers, knife, a couple of screwdrivers—ever so useful when often unexpected circumstances or events arise, like removing fence wire that the tree grew into, or scraping back a bit of bark to check the cambium, tightening or loosening a screw on another tool, like long reach pruners.

Welcome New APA Members

Associate Members
Chelsea McLean, Fort Collins, CO
Joseph Nontanovan, Portland, OR

Affiliate Members
Paul D Ashby, Orinda CA
Dana Tamura, Novato, CA

Organizational Member
Gresham Japanese Garden
North American Japanese Garden Association

Student Members
Larry Bibri - Student, Glastonbury CT
Philip Frias, Menlo Park, CA
Samuel Hager, Berkeley, CA
Mats Hagstrom, San Francisco, CA
Stephen M. Lucas, Portland, OR

APA/NAJGA Workshop Review

We asked APA member Bernt Wankel of Oslo, Norway to share his thoughts on his visit to Oakland for the recent APA/NAJGA Regional Pruning Workshop.

To be a pruner in Oslo is more or less unheard of, and is such a rare interest that it is hard to share face to face. A lot can be learned through books and the internet, but as anyone working with their hands well knows, the tactility, the feel, the actual craft, must be exercised and made your own by doing it.

I did have a rather important thought dawn on me as regards to pruning while attending the workshop. It might seem banal to anyone familiar with the idea already, but much of the Japanese and aesthetic pruning art is the exact opposite of what I was taught coming up in the trade. Whereas much pruning is simply a matter of indiscriminate cutting to a uniform silhouette, starting from the outside going in, the main principle of Japanese pruning and aesthetic pruning is to start from the inside going out, maintaining the plant’s own unevenness and trajectory, thereby displaying its individuality and character. The plants at home are quite different from those at the Gardens at Lake Merritt, but this approach will nevertheless serve me well going forward.

The highpoint of the conference, to me, was meeting so many friendly and enthusiastic people, all with a great passion for the topic and a lot of knowledge to share about the art. Americans are famously friendly, and I got that put to the test. I’m certain I spoke more English the single week spent in California than I spoke Norwegian the two weeks preceding the trip. The instructors were obviously very skilled and had a lot to impart, and together with the intense interest and curiosity from the participants, I feel like I was very well rewarded by attending.

Book Review

Melissa Hyams, CAP #55

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

We have all stood alongside long-lived trees, trees generations old, and thought, “If this tree could speak, what stories it could tell!”

In The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, Ficus carica, the edible common fig, is anything but common. Fig Tree, the principal narrator, tells the story of Ada, a London teenager, her immigrant Cypriot family and the divided island of Cyprus that explores the experiences of exile and belonging, love and loss, and beauty and violence.

The story moves back and forth in time, place and species. It begins in 2010s London with Ada, the daughter of Kostas and Defne. Ada is mourning her recently deceased mother, and her mourning manifests in a distressing episode in class which quickly becomes a viral public humiliation. She comes home from school and says nothing to her preoccupied father, a botanist, who is engaged in the annual burying of his young fig tree, a cutting from a beloved tree in Cyprus, to protect it from the harsh English winter. At the same time, her Aunt Meryem, whom she doesn’t know, arrives for a visit from Cyprus.

In Cyprus’s now divided capital city Nicosia, the taverna The Happy Fig was the home of Fig Tree, around which the taverna was built and where the story is rooted, literally and metaphorically. From her central place in the taverna, Fig Tree narrates the period of postcolonial troubles of the 1950s, the 1974 Cypriot civil war and its aftermath, the forbidden love affair between the young Kostas, a Christian Greek Cypriot, and Defne, a Muslim Turkish Cypriot, and how the civil war separated them until the 2000s. We learn the ways in which plants, animals and humans are scarred by violence and memory is inherited.

Ada’s parents kept a strict practice to protect their daughter from the history of their forbidden love and the trauma of civil war and exile. With Meryem’s arrival, that history slowly unfolds, generational trauma is explored, and the complex interdependence between human and nonhuman life is celebrated. The story is at once full of compassion, critique, insight, and imagination, and well worth reading.

Committee Chair Reports

CRAFT STANDARDS COMMITTEE
Co-chairs: Walt Fujii, CAP #10 and Allison Levin, CAP #34

Committee members: Dina Blackwell, Carolyn Cooley, Grant Foerster, Randall Lee, Maryann Lewis, Lara Miranda, Judy Thomas

At the recent October 16th Craft Standards Committee (CSC) meeting we very happily welcomed a new member to the committee, Carolyn Cooley from Arcata, CA. Welcome aboard, Carolyn!

Allison turned in revised Certified Aesthetic Pruner ® (CAP) portfolio documents to our web designer, Sharna Fabiano. Updating the portfolio requirements for clarity was taken on by Allison and Sharna. We expect the revised requirements will be clearer and more inviting to aspiring CAP applicants!

The CSC put out a request to certain CAPs asking for their help in creating additional questions for the CAP written exam. Many thanks to the following for their able assistance: Lary Huls, Peter Bowyer, Nicki LaPlante, Chris Ingram, Bill Castellon, and Andrew Merriss. The submitted suggested questions are being reviewed by a CSC subcommittee, Maryann Lewis, Grant Foerster and Dina Blackwell. Their collected efforts will broaden and add variety to the CAP written exam database.

In response to comments from CAP applicants and Test Administrators, a subcommittee was formed to rework parts of the oral CAP exam to make them more understandable. Dina Blackwell, Carolyn Cooley and Allison Levin have stepped up to the task.

The Craft Standards Committee will be returning to the topic of continuing education units (CEUs) for Certified Aesthetic Pruners ® in 2025. As always, we welcome participation from interested members!

The APA Certified Aesthetic Pruner ® (CAP) designation recognizes those professional pruners who demonstrate a high level of proficiency when applying the art and science of aesthetic pruning. For this reason, the Craft Standards Committee continues to seek members whose knowledge and experience will maintain the well-earned reputation of the CAP designation.

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EDUCATION COMMITTEE
Chair: Lara Miranda, CAP #65

Committee members: Judy Thomas, Evelyn Borchert, Greg Kitajima, Carolyn Cooley, Allison Levin

Welcome to the newest members of the Education Committee, Carolyn Cooley (Bayside, CA, CAP #15) and Greg Kitajima (Goleta, CA, CAP #26).

We are working on the next New Professionals meeting, “Pruning Tips and Tricks,” as well as more Tree Talks. Send your ideas to apapresident@aestheticprunersassociation.org for more content you'd like to see!

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FINANCE COMMITTEE
Chair: Barbara Eaton, CAP #60

Committee members: Lara Miranda, Dina Blackwell, Melissa Hyams, Nina Rizzo, Mark Mendell, Shivawn Layne (Accountant), Helga Mahlmann (former Accountant)

The APA’s third quarter income included membership dues totaling a little over $2,000, registration fees for Tree Talks and a Tree Walk, over $300 in donations to the Sachiko Umehara Scholarship Fund, interest from our CD account, and merchandise sales. Our main third quarter expenses included accounting fees, Tree Talk speaker fees, website and administrative expenses, and the park reservation fee for the APA picnic in August.

Anyone interested in joining the Finance Committee is welcome to email Barb at apatreasurer@aestheticprunersassociation.org.

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MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
Chair: Alex Senauke

Committee members: Lara Miranda, Dina Blackwell

Between July and October this year, we gained 10 new members including Organizational Memberships from the Gresham Japanese Garden and the North American Japanese Garden Association, bringing the total active membership of the APA to 171. New members hail from California, Connecticut, Colorado, and Oregon.

As an effort to expand our membership base, the APA has registered for a page on LinkedIn! We hope to post information about upcoming events on this new platform. Feel free to follow our page here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aesthetic-pruners-association/

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NEWSLETTER COMMITTEE
Chair: Dina Blackwell, CAP #53 

Committee members: Barbara Eaton, Lara Miranda

We meet virtually to put together content for our quarterly publication. If you have any ideas for stories, or would like to write one yourself, please contact Dina at dinasgardens@gmail.com.

The Newsletter Committee would love to get photos from members for the opening image. It could be a seasonal photo that represents the time of year for that newsletter, or just a photo of a nice tree, someone pruning, or a set of before and after pruning shots.  

Also, we have a column called “Pruning Wisdom” where 2 to 4 pruners answer a question from members. We would love to hear any questions that you would like answered. All of the past newsletters can be viewed on the APA website under the Resources tab, APA Newsletter.

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PROMOTIONS COMMITTEE
Chair: Jeff Becerra 

Committee members: Dina Blackwell, Jane Chua-Couzens, Barb Eaton, Melissa Hyams, Nina Rizzo

The Promotions Committee organized a booth at the Solano Stroll, which took place Sunday, September 8th in Albany. The wildly popular annual event features a mile of booths by vendors, organizations, and in a big election year…lots of aspiring politicians!

Our booth was staffed by Jeff Becerra, Evelyn Borchert and Kristin Vetterlein. Randall Lee hung out at the booth and helped with clean-up at the end of the day, too. Thanks to all of the volunteers!

We saw steady traffic throughout the day and had many meaningful conversations with attendees about aesthetic pruning and the benefits of hiring a pro.

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SCHOLARSHIP COMMITTEE
Chair: Randall Lee, CAP #3 

Committee members: Melissa Hyams, Dina Blackwell

The APA’s Sachiko Umehara Memorial Scholarship of $500 will be awarded in May of 2025. Please spread the word. If you are a student in the Landscape Horticulture Department at Merritt College, or know of one, AND are interested in becoming an aesthetic pruner, this scholarship can help with future educational expenses. The application period for the spring 2025 scholarship started on October 1, 2024 and will close on March 1, 2025.

The requirements are that you must be enrolled at Merritt College and be taking one or more Landscape Horticulture classes. Please apply at the Peralta Colleges Foundation website https://peraltafoundation.org. You do not apply directly for this scholarship, since the Peralta Colleges Foundation matches your application with all of the scholarships you qualify for. If you would like to find out more information about the scholarship and/or donate to the fund, please go to the Scholarships page of the APA website.