For months the heavy snow of winter piled up - and piled up and piled up and piled up - on your trees and shrubs. You might have even added to the mountains when you shoveled out your driveway or sidewalk.

Now that spring has arrived, the melted snow might reveal misshapen branches or missing greenery from your evergreens. Could it have been prevented? Are the plants ruined? Can they be saved?

Time, in most cases, will tell, said Patti Nagai, horticulture educator for the Racine County University of Wisconsin Extension.

There's no avoiding it

"In the short term there's not a whole lot we can do about it," Nagai said of snow-laden trees and bushes. "Most of the time it's better just to let it sit and wait for spring to see what happens."

Nagai herself was worried about some arborvitae she has along her driveway. They sit in the spot where her husband blows all of the snow, which piled up to about 5 feet this year. "There's nothing I can do about it," she said.

Although she admits that there is differences of opinion on how to handle snow among horticulturists. "Some people say you should gently brush the snow off," Nagai said. "People like me say it's too risky."

First of all, there are safety concerns, she said. People tromping out into several feet of snow and attempting to brush snow off tall tree branches could hurt themselves.

In addition, you may actually do more damage to the plant. "If it's been sitting for days, there's no way it can be brushed off," Nagai said. "It's ice. It will be firmly affixed. It's not going to be an easy removal."

And snow is actually beneficial to most plants.

"Snow is a great insulator," Nagai said. "It actually helps to protect plants."

She said a wood and plant specialist in Madison held a rose trial several years ago. She planted 20 to 30 different types of roses in five locations around the state. The first year of the trial there was very little snow here, but it was very cold. At the same time the northern part of the state had good snow cover throughout the winter.

"A good number of the roses in the southern half of the state died," Nagai said. "All of the rose in the northern half of the state came back. They had snow cover. It helped blanket the roses."

Snow protects the lower parts of shrubs and trees, she said. "Even though it might be minus 10 outside, the soil temperature will probably only be 20 degrees. (Snow) is a huge layer of protection. The best survival of all of our plants is when we have a good snow cover.

Best and worst outcomes

In the best spring scenario, your trees and bushes will be perfectly fine after a long, snowy winter, Nagai said. "The branches might be droopy, but they'll eventually pop back up," she said.

In the worst situation, the plants might not look great, then they will die back later in the summer, toward the middle of July or first of August, Nagai said.

"During the heavy snow the branches were probably bent down and developed some cracks," she said. "Those cracks didn't heal. Sometimes you might not know until the end of the summer."

In addition to the snow itself causing harm, it can also protect certain animals that want to eat your plants to death - voles and rabbits in particular.

Voles, which are meadow mice, live under the snow, Nagai said. "Their normal predators can't find them. They thrive in the winter. They girdle the base of shrubs. (The plant) doesn't have a way to come back in the spring."

She said people often mistake vole damage for snow damage.

"We're going to get a lot of calls from people whose shrubs are dead," Nagai said. "The voles have eaten the base of the shrub. People blame it on the snow. It's not directly the snow, but it's related."

Rabbit also will eat shrubs and plants they're hungry, she said. But rabbit-pruning isn't usually fatal for shrubs, Nagai said. Shaping them up and getting rid of the damage is the best way to handle it.

Perfect time for pruning

All damaged and dead branches are best removed in early spring, which is now.

"This is the best time of year to prune," Nagai said.

She said she normally recommends pruning in late February or early March when we have a week of warm weather with temperatures in the 40s to 60s. But that hasn't happened until now.

Late winter or early spring is the best time to prune trees and shrubs because the flowers and leaves are not open yet, Nagai said.

"The trees are waking up," she said. "They are coming out of their dormancy."

"If you notice dead branches or breakage, you'll want to prune them out right away. You might have some breakage on shrubs too, like spirea, evergreens and smaller shrubs. Prune that out."

The following are some tips and information on pruning trees and shrubs from the UW-Extension Web site's garden facts at http://wihort.uwex.edu

Pruning shrubs

Pruning shrubs can control the size, direct growth, influence flowering or fruiting, rejuvenate overgrown plants or maintain plant health and appearance. Pruning also encourages growth below the pruning cut.

There are five ways to properly prune a shrub: thinning, heading back, rejuvenation, shearing and pinching.

Thinning is the best way to renew a shrub. It preserves the overall plant shape, but removes interior branches with loppers or a pruning saw.

Heading back can be used to reduce the height of a shrub.

Rejuvenation cuts the entire shrub back to a height of four to 10 inches, when the shrub is dormant. It is used for shrubs that are overgrown or leggy, but only some shrubs - such as butterfly bush, Annabelle hydrangea, potentilla and Japanese spirea - can tolerate rejuvenation pruning.

Shearing involves removing new shoots using hedge sheers. Shearing should only be used on formal hedges such as yews, boxwood, hemlock and arborvitae.

Pinching is the removal of shoot tips, allowing for additional side branching. This type of pruning increases the bushiness of a shrub.

Pruning trees

Pruning is good for trees for many of the same reasons that it is good for shrubs. But it can also increase the health of a tree by removing broken, diseased, dead or dying branches.

Newly planted trees should not be pruned unless they do have broken, diseased or dead branches. These trees need foliage to produce sugars that are then transported to the root system to initiate new roots.

Young trees, that have been established for two to five years, can be pruned to encourage a well-branched canopy. Lower branches an be removed to raise the canopy. Young trees also need corrective pruning to remove crossing branches, double leaders, watersprouts and root suckers.

Older trees, if properly trained when they are young, require little pruning. These trees should never be topped, as this leads to poor branch structure and increased limb breakage.

Evergreen trees - such as pine, spruce, fire, Douglas fir and hemlock - require little pruning. Don't remove lower branches as this destroys the natural aesthetic form of the tree. Do remove crossing, dead, diseased or broken branches, or individual branches to help maintain the tree's natural pyramid outline.