Ratchet Pruners - Loppers - Pruning Shears - Tree Trimmers - Secateurs

Pruning trees, flowers and shrubbery is an art that requires not only practice but the appropriate tools. Every garden or landscape will require this type of maintenance at some point; however, pruning overgrown tree branches is much different than pruning perennials. Hence, every gardener or landscaper should have a good pair of hand pruners, loppers and shears at the ready in his or her tool shed.

Hand pruners, aka secateurs, are small scissor-like cutters that are best suited for trimming easy-to-reach branches or stems that are small in diameter. Loppers, on the other hand, have long handles to provide extra leverage when cutting through thicker branches that may be hard to reach great for trimming trees. Pruning shears resemble giant scissors that require both hands to operate and are most commonly used for shaping and trimming hedges.

Hand pruners and loppers can be found in three different styles. The most widely used is bypass pruners. Bypass pruners have two sharp blades that meet together like scissors with a large convex blade on top and a small concave blade on the bottom. Anvil pruners, aka Secateurs, have a sharp blade on top that comes down onto a flat surface, or anvil. Parrot-beak pruners have two sharp concave blades of the same size that meet together in the middle.

While they provide invaluable help, using hand pruners and loppers commonly results in fatigue in the hands and wrists for many landscapers and gardeners. The solution for this comes in the form of ratchet pruners. Ratchet pruners require less force to work yet have a markedly increased cutting power. Unlike conventional pruners that will only cut once the handles are forced together, squeezing the handles repeatedly with minor pressure is all that is required of ratchet pruners. This triggers a mechanism inside the pruner to ratchet down onto a branch or stem and make the cut in stages. Once the blade has closed all the way, it opens back up to prepare for the next cut.

Pruning trees, flowers and shrubbery is a labor of love in more ways than one for the dedicated horticulturalist. However, hand ratchet pruners and loppers can be quite the godsend for any landscaper or gardener with hand injuries or weakened wrists. They not only make short work of various and required pruning tasks, they make sure the garden stays lovely, the trees stay healthy and no one wakes up the next day with sore hands and wrists.