This is your chance to take a master class with the Head of the Arboretum at England’s renowned
Kew Gardens! The course will focus on the principles and techniques of tree pruning from formative
pruning to mature tree crown management. Tony Kirkham (pictured below) will cover pruning
tools, minimizing the potentially undesirable effects of pruning, the risk management of deadwood,
formative pruning, crown thinning, lifting, reduction and reshaping, as well as selective pruning.
Tony will encourage you to envision the end result you are aiming for in your pruning and consider
the pruning strategy required to achieve them. He will provide insight into the pruning and related
work found in British Standard BS 3998:2010 Tree Work Recommendations and how they compare
to American ANSI standards. Tony and his team manage more than 14,000 trees at Kew Gardens.
He is the author of two books on pruning—The Pruning of Trees, Shrubs, and Conifers and Essential Pruning Techniques. Part of the class will be an outside tour of the Arboretum to look at pruning scenarios and discuss strategies. Dress for the weather. This course carries 4.5 CEUs for ISA certified arborists (S=0, P=4.5, M=0).
The Arboretum’s professional training courses carry International Society of Arboriculture Continuing Education Units. If you are an ISA certified arborist and need to maintain certification by taking 30 credits over a three-year period, you will want to sign up for classes at the Morris Arboretum. Some courses also carry CEUs for landscape architects. If you have questions about this, please contact Jan McFarlan, (215) 247-5777, ext. 156 or jlm@upenn.edu. The ISA category codes for CEUs are as follows: Science=S, Practice=P, Management=M.
Fee: $175 (includes lunch)
