Plant Training

One of the problems with small gardens where you've a lot of plants in them, is that "stuff grows."
I'm a firm believer in not letting them do their own thing

Each year I do stuff to contain the growth.

We have this acer in the front garden, but each winter I prune between six inches and foot of growth off it, to make it retain its "lollypop" shape. If I didn't, after thirty years now it would have been as tall as the house and banging up against the bedroom windows and our neighbours wouldn't be too pleased. I keep it to about 16ft tall.




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The other problem being some plants don't grow the way you want them to, or at the same rate, but it is possible to train them, even those which are of the hard wood families. I find this sometimes better than actually moving the plant.

Each year, once all the leaves have fallen and I've pruned off all the dead wood, I put a net over this acer palmatum and attach it to stakes in the lawn to encourage it to adopt a dome like shape. If I didn't it'd end up looking like a giant cocktail umbrella, dominating the centre of the garden more than it does any way. In the Spring, I'll remove the net and give it a bit of a haircut, removing any new growth that is "untrainable."





This camellia wants to spread, but it's retained by a wire around it and temporarily attached to the Japanese lantern with more wire to stop it leaning to the right.



We've a few rhodos but these two, which I bought about ten years ago in 12" pots from Wyevale, they were half price as the blooms had frost damage. But they've thrived, unfortunately they've not grown at the same rate, (the second one is the one on the extreme right) so the larger, tortoise shell one I've restrained with wire to keep it more contained, pulling it to the left and to give a newer smaller next to it a chance to get some light. Of course it won't retain the present shape and will spring back a bit once I remove the wire, to form a more natural shape, but it will be more contained.



This Sorbus had over time begun leaning forwards and to the left, brushing against the pagoda, we've had it about fifteen years..

I cured the "left lean," the year before last and by this Spring the forward lean will also be cured. Just by attaching it with a plastic clothes line under tension, to a hook in the concrete fence post, increasing the tension slightly after a couple of months,





When you think about it it's the same as bonsai.

I'm quite ruthless when it comes to pruning.

We'd had this small acer a couple of years, it began to look like the dog in the Monet graphic on the top of one of my jukeboxes.



So it got the chop and now gets a bit of light pruning every year.

 

An interesting read; thank you for sharing it with us