Coarse to Fine

Last year I wrote a newsletter all about the Winter Silhouette. It is impossible to talk about the winter silhouette without talking about the aesthetic pruning concept of Coarse to Fine.

“Coarse to fine begins where the trunk emerges from the earth and flows up through the tree to the fine tips of the branches. The tree has physiological reasons for this taper but I love the visual lines, patterns and spaces these branches create. A beautiful trunk grounds me to the earth and the fine tips connect me to the sky.” ~ February 2025 Newsletter

Coarse to Fine is one of the concepts integral to the aesthetic pruning approach. Its what lends the approach towards more natural looking trees as apposed to more mechanical looking pruning such as shearing or pollarding.

The aesthetic pruning language for the ideating and decision making phase of design is called Find the Good. This is the phase where paying attention to coarse to fine relationships comes into play. It is closely aligned with preserving the essence of a tree when trying to keep a tree small or when making a reduction cut of a branch that is in the way of a path or colliding with neighboring plants. When choosing which branch to cut there should always be a back and forth dialogue between preserving the coarse to fine branch structure and completing the pruning goal.

In my online course Pruning Decisions with a Plan, I include the Coarse to Fine concept in the chapter about Finding Good. In reality it could be a course all on its own. We can all see that trees have a natural taper but actually identifying branches to reduce to, that maintain that natural taper are not as available as one would hope.

This is a good time of year to train your eye to notice the Coarse to Fine taper of different types of trees. The more you practice, the easier it will be to find good transitions when the time comes to prune.

Podcast

February 4, 2026 ~  Bonsai Mirai: Asymmetry (by Ryan Neil). Nitrogen and Trees with Meghan Midgley. So much good information about fertilizing and soils in this podcast! I will be listening to it more than once.

Books

Understanding Roots … discover how to make your garden flourish. by Robert Kourik

I am mesmerized by the root drawings in this book (and how far they extend past the drip line!) but now I will be taking a closer look at the text since listening to the Bonsai Mirai Asymmetry podcast with Meghan Midgley.

Robert Kourik was a guest on the Joe Gardner podcast, episode 215 July 1, 2021. 

Going ons

Workshop: The Pruning Lab - March 14th, 9:00am to 4:00pm

Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita Oregon

In the morning I will be demonstrating on various plants in a private garden and in the afternoon we will prune the pines and juniper in the Wonder Garden. Bring your sharp, clean hand clippers, gloves and weather appropriate gear.

You can register here with the Hoffman Center for the Arts. The Pruning Lab workshop is eligible for The Hoffman Center for the Arts scholarship program.

Zoom Presentation

PNW-ISA Arbor Chat: Aesthetic Pruning Concepts.

I will be covering aesthetic pruning concepts and how they are implemented for ornamental trees and shrubs.

March 17, 2026 -  12:00pm, Free to members and $20.00 for non members.

YouTube Videos

I have a Pinus sylvestris (Scots Pine) that I planted in my garden about 9 years ago. It was one of those neglected trees from a nursery and at first I thought it was a smaller needle cultivar. Its not! The tree found its real form within a couple of years. I compiled a 9 year time lapse video and posted it to my YouTube channel. You can glimpse the rest of the garden growing up with it.

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