Cham. Law. Elwoods Gold

Greetings from a waterlogged Plymouth - everything in the garden is growing apace in the present humid,warm conditions, nothing more so, it seems, than our trees and shrubs. An explosion of growth. Problem is that our 20+ year old Elwoods Gold is now some 4.5 metres tall with a girth of some 2 metres - not at all what we were lead to believe when we bought it all those years ago and was told "fine for the heather garden, it's fastigiate in manner and slow growing". I've seen one many years ago in Kew Gardens and, at that time, it was a 'weedy' specimen compared with our giant. We don't feed it, yet it grows and grows.
'Don't want to cut it down; it's an old friend but is there a way, do tell me, that it can be delicately trimmed, brought down to size a little and kept that way?
The advice of my new 6700+ friends will be appreciated. - and thank you.

 

Hello... and welcome

There's not really any way to keep them small, they might be slow growing, but they will eventually get quite big, and they will love your mild wet climate.

You can delicately trim, as if you were trimming a hedge, but at 4 1/2 metres that might be difficult, don't cut as far back as the brown wood.

 

Good evening Quercus - many thanks for your prompt and kind reply. I reckon my Elwoods Gold is just the thing for your large Somerset garden. Sharing a mere 400 square metre back garden with several other trees is starting to make for a little overcrowding here. As you write, it's so easy to cut into the brown interior of these trees. I wonder, have you ever come across my not-yet-tried idea of carefully getting inside the tree and, after a lot of thought as to the consequences and resulting green cladding, cutting away vertical branch/es so reducing the tree's girth? To reduce it even further perhaps it might be possible to use some plastic covered wire (not too thin so as to cut into the bark) and pad the wire and branches with something rot-proof and then circling the branches around the circumference and gently pulling them in and tying off?
If you think this might work or if you have other ideas, I shall be grateful for your advice,
Kind regards