Why bother with an old, neglected tree?

A gnarled old apple or pear tree with a tangle of crossing branches and a thicket of water shoots may look like a lost cause, but it rarely is. Trees that have stood in a garden for fifty or eighty years have a root system you simply cannot buy, and they often carry a local variety that has vanished from the nurseries. Renovation takes patience rather than strength, and a tree brought back into shape over three or four winters will usually out-crop and outlive anything you plant to replace it.

The trick is to work with the tree's own timetable rather than against it. Hard pruning an ancient tree in a single weekend can trigger a mass of weak regrowth, shock the roots into sulking, or leave it vulnerable to canker and silver leaf. Slow and steady, with deadwood first, is the way.

Start with a proper winter assessment

Prune apples, pears, quinces and medlars in winter, ideally between late November and the end of February while the tree is fully dormant. Plums, damsons, cherries and gages are the exception: prune those in late June or July to reduce the risk of silver leaf and bacterial canker. Before you pick up a saw, walk round the tree with a notebook.

• Look at the trunk and main limbs. Are there hollows, splits, fungal brackets or soft, sunken patches? Canker on apples and pears shows as cracked, corky lesions.
• Check for stability. Push gently on the trunk. A rocking tree may need a prop or a stake rather than a pruning saw.
• Find the graft union low on the trunk, and note any suckers growing from the rootstock below it.
• Map the canopy. Identify which branches are genuinely dead — grey, brittle, snapping cleanly with no green layer under the bark — and which are simply crowded.
• Photograph it from three or four angles so you can see your progress year on year.

Year one: deadwood, disease and damage only

In the first winter, resist the urge to reshape. Your only job is the obvious. Remove dead, dying and diseased branches, plus any that are rubbing, broken or crossing so badly that bark has been damaged. Take out suckers from the base and any water shoots emerging below the graft union. Cut back stubs left by previous bad pruning to the nearest sound branch or to a well-placed outward-facing shoot.

Cut cleanly, just beyond the branch collar — the slight swelling where a branch joins its parent — without leaving a long stub and without cutting flush into the trunk. Aim to remove no more than about a quarter of the canopy in any one winter. Do not paint the wounds; modern advice is to leave them to seal naturally. Sterilise your tools between trees if you have been working on diseased wood.

Years two and three: opening up the canopy

With the dead material gone, you can start thinning. The goal is a goblet or vase shape with a clear centre, so light and air reach the fruiting wood, and a ladder is not required to pick the crop.

• Remove whole branches rather than tipping everything, working from the centre outwards.
• Take out one or two of the largest, most crowded limbs in year two — the ones growing inwards, upwards or crossing through the middle.
• Shorten long, whippy growth by roughly a third to a half, cutting to an outward-facing bud.
• Bring the height down gradually across two or three winters rather than sawing the top off in one go.
• Leave the remaining branches evenly spaced, roughly 30–45cm apart where possible.

Big cuts — anything over 5cm across — should be made in two stages: an undercut first, then a top cut slightly further out, so the branch does not tear the bark as it falls.

Renewing tired fruiting wood

Old apples and pears fruit on spurs — short, knobbly shoots on wood two years and older — and on the tips of younger shoots. Neglected trees often have long, bare branches with all the spurs crowded at the far end. Shorten those branches back to a younger side shoot, which encourages new spur formation further in. On tip-bearers such as many cookers and some old varieties, simply thin the tangled clusters of young wood and leave the tips alone.

Plums, cherries and gages fruit on short spurs on two- to three-year-old wood. Remove the oldest, dullest branches at the base in summer and let younger replacements take over.

Aftercare: feed the roots, not just the top

A renovated tree has been asked to do a lot of work, so look after what is underground. In late winter, spread a mulch of well-rotted manure or garden compost in a ring from about 30cm out from the trunk to the edge of the canopy — never pile it against the bark. A balanced general fertiliser in February, at roughly 70g per square metre, suits most established trees.

Water deeply in dry spells during the first two summers after heavy pruning, keep grass and weeds clear from around the base, and check ties on any stakes. Expect a modest crop in the first year or two, then a steady improvement. By the fourth season you should have a tree that is lighter, healthier and far easier to pick — and a variety worth keeping for another fifty years.