Zen and the culture of pruning

The Skype meeting was tedious and I found myself checking FaceBook. Checking FaceBook out of the corner of my eye; one can never look away from the camera during an online meeting. A discrete click, a sly scroll and ‘Pruning is cultural not scientific’, that’s worth a read.

Pruning is cultural not scientific, I’m sure that’s what I saw but when I went back to find it, the post was gone – lost on someone else’s feed. At the time, I’m sure it was said to be a quote from Dr Ed Gilman. I’m a bit of a fan of Ed, I’m suspect he has some pruning enlightenment, Zen Master thing going on. The quote seemed like something Ed might say, but if he did say it, what could it mean? The obvious thing to do was to ask him, but it was 2:00 AM in his home town.

Could it be about cultural practices, the art of making pruning cuts and the science of knowing how and when to prune? Maybe, but I didn’t think so; there is nothing very Zen about that. Could it be about cultural controls; plant selection, disease management, sanitation practices and aftercare etc. but again, this seemed like a Zen free zone – great if you are growing cucumber, but no self-respecting arborist is going to post vegetable growing on FaceBook. So what could ‘Pruning Is Cultural’ actually mean?

In the end, I sent off an email to Ed and waited; “Hi Ed, Pruning is cultural not scientific – is this something you would say, and if so what do you mean by it?”

Ed replied at 2:00 AM the next day with, “… the practice of pruning is passed down from one generation to another typically in a local area, and from one company to another, as arborists take new positions, and from what people see in their daily lives so yes for these reasons the practice of pruning is largely cultural.”

So Ed wasn’t busting out any Zen mindfulness malarkey, there was none of this; ‘if you chase two rabbits, you catch none’ or ‘muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone’, Ed was just saying it like it is, but was there more?

The practice of pruning is largely cultural; ‘the teacher can only teach what they know’. The teacher may decide not to teach all that they know, but they can’t teach more than they know. There is a simple logic to that, and it explains why countries and companies can have different ideas about pruning. It also explains how we can have so much variance in what is ‘right’ even when the science behind pruning, in theory, is the same.

On the flip side is the learner; ‘the learner does not need to be limited by the teacher’.

Faux Zen – eek! But before you run off to print inspirational posters, or get it tattooed in Sanskrit down the back of your leg, let’s consider and focus on that for a second.

Starting with, how we can have so much variance in what is right?

Nature is not perfect, sorry – she’s not perfect, she’s shockingly wasteful and she makes mistakes. Because nature is not perfect, there is no perfect answer to a natural problem. There can be lots of wrong answers but we need to start with the idea that there might also be more than one right answer. So, when dealing with nature [trees], there can be variance in what is right. And, with that in mind, if there is more than one right answer then maybe your answer, your solution to the pruning problem isn’t the only right answer. Let’s start by accepting that other people may also be right (the teacher can only teach what they know).

Now for the learner not needing to be limited by the teacher bit. The learner does not need to be limited by the teacher, they can also learn from other people and also what they see and do in their daily lives. Accepting that there may be more than one solution to a problem, learners need to be exposed to as many solutions as possible – learners learn from what they do and see.

We are all learners, the less we see and do the less we learn; we are all teachers, but we can only teach what we know.

Like many of us, I went through my training, got a job and honed my skills. After a couple of years, I had become very good at doing what I had been trained to do. At that stage, I had not travelled, I had not attended conferences or seen a tree climbing competition. At that stage, I did not know how much I did not know. Then I bought a one-way ticket, flew to the other side of the earth and found out that I didn’t know much and could do even less. After six or eight years, I came back, started teaching and went to university part-time. I had gone from learner to teacher back to the learner.

Recently I came across one of my students; he had learnt from his teacher (me) and his mistakes (experience). He had become very good at doing what he could do, but he hadn’t seemed to have learnt from what he had seen. When I told him to do something completely different (different from what he knew, different from what I had taught him all those years ago) he went into a tail-spin. What he wanted to do was right based on what we used to do, based on what I had taught him to do. What I wanted him to do was also right, based on what we now know, based on what I now know. Variations of right.

Yes, pruning is cultural and the practice of pruning is passed down from one generation to another but that doesn’t mean change can’t happen. Cultures evolve, they adopt grow and change. When looking at other people’s pruning, try and learn from it, it might be another version of right, there may be more to it than you first thought, look closely, look so you can see – look and learn, but never look away from the camera during an online meeting.

• Written for the ARB Magazine (UK)