Hedge Shear

What Are Hedge Shears?
Hand-operated hedge shears, more than any other gardening tool, look like giant scissors. They have long, straight blades typically somewhat under a foot long, sometimes wavy-edged to hold stems in place as they cut (but which are harder to sharpen).
With such long blades, hedge shears are designed to cut a much larger area with each stroke than any other pruning tool (unless you consider a machete a pruning tool). For this reason, and since they are straight, they create long, straight edges on your plant as they cut. As you can imagine, this is not the natural shape of any plant, and not right for most plant care in your garden.