What Is The Difference Between Heavy Pruning And Light Pruning Of Bonsai Trees?

You will often hear the phrases “Heavy Pruning” and “Light Pruning” in the bonsai world, which can seem pretty strange. Surely pruning is just pruning, how can there be differences?

When you hear these two terms it is talking more about the amount of work you are doing. Heavy pruning means you are cutting a lot off the tree, where as light pruning is when you hardly remove anything.   

What Is Heavy Pruning Of A Bonsai?

When we look at heavy pruning it is always quite drastic looking and lots of the tree can be removed and fundamental changes are usually made.

This can be as simple as just making one large cut and removing a certain section, such as a whole branch, or it can be generally across the whole tree, where a lot of material is removed.

You will often see this during a late winter pruning, where nearly all of the growth from the previous summer is pushed right back. You can see this in so many of my YouTube videos, where I prune the long branches back to 2 or 3 leaf buds.     

Heavy pruning could also just be something like defoliation, where you remove all of the leaves from the tree. No branches need to be removed here, but it is still quite drastic and a lot of the tree is still removed.

A lot of these pruning sessions can seem very aggressive, but it is all calculated and there is a reason behind every cut, no matter how large it seems.

What Is A Light Pruning Of A Bonsai?

Light pruning of a bonsai is the total opposite of heavy pruning. It is when there is minimal work done.

Usually this will be things like just pruning the very end tips of the branches back, or just pruning back one long shoot or removing a couple that have popped up in places that are not wanted.

The main difference with this type of pruning is that you don’t really notice it has happened. The tree often looks pretty much untouched afterwards.

Why Would You Do Either Of These Types Of Pruning?

The main reason you would pick one type of pruning over another all comes down to what you are trying to achieve with the tree.

If your tree in the development stage it is going to be subject to a lot more hard pruning than a tree in refinement, and this just because the main structure of the tree is being created and sometimes that requires drastic changes to happen to achieve this.

Once you are happy with how the tree looks and it is actually starting to look like a bonsai, then really it will not need drastic work to keep making it look better. You will just need to prune the tips of the branches and allow it to become more refined.       

(You can read more about – How Long Will It Take For A Bonsai To Recover From Pruning?)

You Can Do A Mix Of The Two Types Of Pruning

You will find that you will use both styles of pruning throughout a trees life. You will usually find that the more developed the tree gets, the less hard pruning you need to do, and you will start doing lighter pruning.

However, you may also find that you go back and forth between the styles over a number of years. Just because you are pruning lightly now, doesn’t mean you will never prune hard again. It all just depends on how the tree is growing and what work it needs.

You can also find that there may be times where you end up doing a combination of both methods at the same time. You may just be lightly pruning the majority of the tree, but there is a branch you don’t want any more and you end up pruning this back very hard.

There is nothing wrong with mixing the two methods like this and so long as the tree is healthy and you are taking in all aspects of its health and future recovery into consideration, then doing this is totally fine.    

(You can read more about – How To Prune A Bonsai Tree – A Beginners Guide)

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see the difference between light and heavy pruning and more importantly, understand why you might do either one of these types of pruning.

If I am honest, you shouldn’t worry too much about labelling what you are doing, just do it. If the tree needs a lot of work done, do that. If it just needs a light bit of pruning, do that. If it is somewhere in the middle… do that.  

So long as you prune correctly, your tree will develop and slowly become a bonsai.

(You can read more about – What Do You Do If You Accidentally Prune The Wrong Branch Off Your Bonsai?)