In our profession as aesthetic pruner-arborists, too often we encounter shrubs and shrub-trees that have been improperly pruned. Often they’re pruned (sheared) into geometric shapes like cubes, spheres, rectangles, pyramids, cones or even lollipops. I call this cubistic pruning—like cubistic art, if you can even call it art. Often a client will move into a home where the plants have been pruned in this manner by the previous owners, and the new owners want to restore the plant to its natural shape; they want to de-sqaurify, de-spherify, de-conify it, if you will. This often can be done, but a tree can’t be transformed from a geometric shape to its natural form overnight. It may take a few years of corrective or restorative pruning to accomplish this. In this video, we will demonstrate the first step taken to de-squarify a camellia that has been pruned and sheared for years into a cube shape. Please enjoy.