Today we did some autumn tidying up in the French Memorial Garden.  The tasks that were involved were:

• 

  The Correa in the French Memorial Garden needing a prune

  To prune back the Correa alba at the entrance.  The Correa had not been pruned in a while so there were lots of long leafy stems, giving it an unkempt appearance.  I worked on cutting back the new growth to give it a much more sculpted hedge appearance.  I did this by cutting each long stem back within the bulk of the shrub.  That way when new growth begins from the cutting, it will fill out the shape of the hedge.  I tried to cut each stem just above where there already were some leaves on the same stem to maintain a leafy appearance to the hedge, rather than cutting completely randomly, which could have left woody stems protruding from the hedge. I used secateurs for the pruning because they tend to give a more natural looking hedge, in contrast to using the hedge clippers.

An area of Cushion Bush and Guineaflower that needed some autumn leaf litter removed

• To remove the leaf litter around the Cushion Bush (Scleranthus biflorus) and the Spreading Guineaflower (Hibbertia procumbens)planting.  A lot of Autumn leaves have dropped already and there was a lot of leaf litter building up between the plants in the garden bed.  I removed the leaf litter because the decomposing leaf litter could cause crown rot in the display planting, and the litter also takes away from the appearance of the garden.

The activity today would relate to installing and maintaining plant displays and perform specialist amenity pruning.

There were not any pressing OH&S issues on the day.  The main concerns were to keep rubbish bins and leaf cuttings out of the middle of the paths where pedestrians were walking and taking photos.  While I was picking up leaf litter it was important to not bend over and it was better to sit on the ground and pick out the leaves from the garden in a lower position to the ground.  PPE that was used on the day was: gloves, long sleeve shirt and pants, and steel cap boots.

The site was pretty flat and open, so there was not many issues with access.  There was a large boulder near the Correa, which did not prove to be a problem.

Secateurs, rubbish bins, brooms and a ute were used on the day.  Before using the secateurs it was important to make sure they were sharp and clean to make good pruning cuts. To properly use the secateurs, it is important to cut each stem with the flat side of the blades pointing towards the plant.  It is also important to cut each stem at a slight angle to help mitigate disease forming in the cut.

Methylated spirits were used to clean the secateurs.  Since I was working on one bush, I sprayed my secateurs every once and a while. Environmental requirements only included making sure the leaf litter was properly removed from the site.  We used rubbish bins for this.  After the activity was over we sprayed our equipment with methylated spirits and rinsed them out.

The Correa after it has been freshly pruned

All tasks were completed.  Pruning is a very labour intensive task.  It took most of the morning to prune just that one area of Correa.  It takes a lot of effort to maintain a shrub in a low hedged form.  I was very particular about where I pruned the stems back to, but I wonder if I was being too particular and could have sped up the time by not being so exact with the pruning.