Acre Palmatum ‘Garnet’

Hiya folks.

I have one of these in a pot, as shown. It’s healthy enough, but feel that I’d like to give it a trim to improve the shape, nothing drastic. Any reason why I shouldn’t?

 

No problem Freddie.
I trim mine back. It improves density and shape.
Now is good

 

Righto

 

It depends on how you want it to look.
To give it some shape you'd need to be quite ruthless. But it will recover.

Some people like to let them to do their own thing, but I like a bit of symmetry, nature often doesn't.
These acers can be trained, even when it might seem impossible.

I took four photos after reading your post.

Our thirty-odd year old one, looks reasonably uniform. But not perfect.




If you look underneath you'd wonder how ever even that was achievable. It's a total mess of twisted branches. But it was over ten years old before I decided to have a go at it. Lots of branches had to be moved around a bit at a time over many months.



Some are easy to train like this one we bought from B & Q over a decade ago for fifty quid, but I got started on it straight away.



It just needed a few branches moving one way or another to get an even spread all round.




Different acer, we bought off Altrincham Market five years ago. We'd had it two years and it grew like this. I always say it looked like the small figure in Monet's "Sunlight under the poplars."




But with some ruthless pruning and regular trims, we can keep it like this and under control.



I keep them well watered and give them a "mist spray" in mid afternoon if its really hot. The leaves can burn quite quickly.

 

Thanks for that @Doghouse Riley . The ‘leader’ on mine snapped off some years back, so it’s destined to be a low-grower, I think? I’m not looking for anything too formal, just bit more symmetry.

 

Superb Acers DHR.....down here, too near the coast, to grow Acers as well as I would like. I have just the one, Garnet, and it looks pretty good in a sheltered corner of the garden from winds and strong sunshine

 

Just noticed, thread title reads ‘Acre’

 

I wasn't going to mention it.

Anyway, "it's a well known fact," that message boards can add typos or spelling mistakes, between "Preview" and "Post."