The maturing garden, both in the sense of its longevity and its seasonal maturation, requires continual cut-back to ensure tidiness. Ornamental trees and shrubs, like any other growing organism, take all the advantage they can out of the growing season. Once they've been firmly and comfortably established they begin to put on height and width and simply grow into the space permitted them by presumably judicious planting.

And of course the gardener, before even planting, must try to take into account the space that any single tree or shrub will require to fit comfortably into the entire garden picture envisioned in the head of that very same gardener. It's difficult when faced with a tabula rasa, a blank slate, to imagine how trees will eventually begin to fill in the landscape. Coupled with that difficulty is the desire to fill in the landscape as swiftly as possible to attain that mature garden look.

Most of us are impatient to achieve the look of a well-balanced, mature garden, so we tend to leave less space between growing trees and shrubs and perennials that will grow to their eventually mature size, than we should. It's always difficult to imagine how well growing things will occupy their space and nudge their neighbours.

We're facing that problem now, when our trees and shrubs have achieved their mature size, and are still reaching out in all directions. On our front walk leading to the porch, trees are over-reaching themselves, in the sense that the lovely bower effect that has been achieved also presents as a challenge to clear and easy movement.

The garden as impediment to flow. Well, that requires well-intentioned and clear foresight, but failing that, a good, sharp pair of clippers.