RHS Pruning and Training
What, When, and How to Prune Over 800 Plants
DK, with the RHS (text by Christopher Brickell and David Joyce) · DK, 2025
The pruning reference. Its real strength is that it answers <em>when</em>, which is the question most pruning advice gets wrong.
This was quietly reissued in April 2025 at £25, up from £19.99. It is the same 336-page extent as the 2017 edition and we found no evidence of substantive new content. If you already own the 2017 edition (9780241282908), don't upgrade. If you're buying fresh and on a budget, the 2017 edition is being cleared cheaply and you lose very little — pruning technique doesn't date the way pesticide advice does.
What's actually in it
- Organised by plant type, not alphabetically: general principles for each group, then plant-by-plant entries covering growth habit and specific requirements.
- Groups covered: ornamental trees, ornamental shrubs, climbers, roses, hedges, conifers, palms, fruit trees, fruit bushes and fruiting vines.
- Specialist techniques: renovation pruning, coppicing, pollarding, topiary, espalier and other trained forms, and pinch pruning.
- Clear line artworks plus step-by-step photographs showing exactly where and how to cut.
What it actually says
Specifics from inside the book — so you can judge whether it's telling you anything you don't already know.
- Four specific questions the book sets out to answer, per its own cover copy: when to prune evergreens; whether to restore an overgrown specimen or replace it; when to call an arborist rather than do it yourself; and how to stop climbing roses going bare at the base.
- Techniques are assigned to plant groups explicitly — coppicing and pollarding treated as tree techniques, pinch pruning as a shrub technique — across 800-plus plants organised by type, with separate treatment of hedges, topiary, ornamental grasses, bamboo, conifers, palms, roses, vines and tree fruit.
- Line artworks plus step photography showing exactly where the cut goes, which is the thing text alone cannot do.
What we couldn't checkWe could not sample the interior — no preview or extract exists and the library scans are access-restricted — so we have described its architecture rather than quoting its rules. What we can say with confidence is that its real strength is answering <em>when</em>, which is the question most pruning advice gets wrong.
Buy it if
You have a woody plant, secateurs, and a nagging sense you're about to do something irreversible.
Don't buy it if
Anyone with a garden of lawn and bedding and nothing woody in it.
Where it falls short
Pruning only. Nothing on propagation, soil, feeding, pests or planting. No meaningful house plant pruning. Tree surgery and large-tree work are outside its scope — this is a hand-tool, garden-scale book. Note too that DK has now repackaged this title in 1996, 2011, 2017 and 2025 at the same page extent.
Who wrote it
The underlying text is by Christopher Brickell (former RHS Director General — see the encyclopedias) and David Joyce, jointly credited on every edition from the 1996 original onward. On the 2025 edition the byline reads simply "DK", and DK's own pages credit Brickell alone, dropping Joyce entirely from a revision of the text he co-wrote. We could find no published biography establishing Joyce's credentials either way, which is itself part of the problem: the names that justified trusting this book are quietly disappearing from it.
Where it was written
UK timing throughout — dormant season, "after flowering", UK month references. These do not translate to US zones.
The facts
- AuthorDK, with the RHS (text by Christopher Brickell and David Joyce)
- PublisherDK
- Published2025
- FormatHardback, 336 pages
- ISBN-13
9780241662076 - LevelImprover to reference
Checked against publisher listings, UK retailers and library records in August 2026. If any of this is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Where to get it
Buying secondhand? Match the ISBN above — several books on this shelf have editions that look identical but aren't.