How to ruin a Japanese Maple In one easy step!

I was downtown yesterday and I saw something I usually only have nightmares about.

I have talked about surface pruning and hedging plants that shouldn't be hedged. I saw an extreme example of this style of pruning.

Yes! This is a Japanese Maple. Actually there are three Japanese maple in this picture.

This is an extreme picture of either incorrect plant selection or butchering the pruning job. In this case I don't see any reason why the maple couldn't have been allowed to grow up and be a real Japanese Maple.

I think this demonstrates the importance of knowing what plants should look like and prune to match. In this landscape there is also a cubed Mugho Pine and a Heavenly Bamboo sheared into a box.

There are numerous examples of this everywhere. In some cases it is because during the plant selection process someone chose the wrong plant. In other cases as shown here it is just lazy pruning!

I am collecting Pictures and will discuss what should be done in a later post.