Every gardener has at some point had to deal with the problem of a plant that has at least in part collapsed. There are two main courses disease or mechanical damage usually due to wind or snow. Where a disease is the course there is no obvious sign of damage and normally all of the plant is effected with herbaceous plants completely collapsing and wood plants the leaves and soft shoot collapse. The cause is normally the disease coursing organism blocking the vessels in the plant stems and by the time the damage becomes visible there is little the gardener can do. The remainder of this article is a discussion of collapse that is not cause by this.
When faced with a branch that has broken off there is often a temptation to try and support the affected branch. In practice, this is rarely successful in part because of the weight of the branch that needs to be supported but also because the whole plant is flexing all the time and the damaged area is unlikely to heal as the damage is constantly opening and closing. In practice, the best practice is usually to cut the damaged section back to a natural fork, preferably where the cut will be hidden by the remainder of the plant.
Occasionally the cause is not wind or snow but the weight of the plant, including fruit, and here prevention is better than cure. Small fruit trees or plums in a bumper year are particularly prone to this and here temporary support by tree stakes can work well. Alternatively the plants can be thinned and this is can work well where branches become too large for the trunks they are growing from.
There are cases, most notably the more upright conifers, where the very upright habit of the plant starts to open out, usually in the style of odd branches spreading out. Frequently people try to strap the wayward branches back into the body of the plant but it is nearly never successful and there you are left with the choice of either trying to cut out the affected branches, though this can weaken the overall shape and lead to further collapse or accept that this is a nature phenomena and let nature take it’s course; accepting the plant as it is.
