I found a 50+ year old boxwood that was intended for someone's yard, but never got planted. This thing has some height to it, and I want to scale it back. It has multiple trunks with a rather large main section where the trunks meet. Can I get away with chopping all the trunks at once, or would it be better to chop on trunk at a time? I do not have a picture yet, but I will have some early next week.
50+ year old landscape boxwood trunk cutting
- Thread starter brjulias
- Start date
defra
Masterpiece
Im carefull with boxwood and would keep some green on everything that might be needed in the design and wait for it to backbud before cutting back further slowly work it down!
-norwegian_blue-
Yamadori
Sn0W
Shohin
I'm brutal with Boxwood. I have 8 some collected and some old nursery stock, all were cut back to basically stumps with the start of main branches and the roots reduced by 75% and all have pushed out loads of new growth. I read a lot about people struggling with them but they seem hard to kill here
sorce
Nonsense Rascal
For me....keeping the top and bottom removal % is huge.
If you happened to get a lot of roots...
But want to reduce the top more....
Reduce the bottom more as well.
I think all the mixed successes hinges on this.
Welcome to Crazy!
Sorce
If you happened to get a lot of roots...
But want to reduce the top more....
Reduce the bottom more as well.
I think all the mixed successes hinges on this.
Welcome to Crazy!
Sorce
If you do not mind me asking a few questions. Where are you located? What zone is it? What mix do you use? I live in Florida zone 9a, and I am wondering how to adjust the things for my area.
grouper52
Masterpiece
LOL! I never found them to be easy to kill!
1st tree I ever styled was a nursery stock boxwood from the "junk" section of a garden nursery near Memphis in about 1999.. It had a gangly "goal post" configuration, and even though I was a novice, I knew one side of the goal post had to go. I got it home, and then sat on the floor of our apartment that evening with a saw in hand to trim it back to a single trunk, and my wife started screaming with horror that I would do such a thing to tree, and that I would surely kill it! I had to send her to bed ... here's a photo from my album here, showing how it turned out, years later in 2015 - one of my favorite trees from over the years. From my experience with several of them, and the experiences of others I know that have worked with them, I don't think you have to baby them.
BrianBay9
Masterpiece
Growing taper out from large branch stumps may take a lifetime though.
Sn0W
Shohin
I'm in Bristol, UK and the zone is about 9a. I used straight cat litter for 5, 3 are just in normal garden compost as I ran out of cat litter.
It may take years, going to experiment with them in different conditions though and see what the growth rates are like.
rockm
Spuds Moyogi
Zone 9a in the U.S. is the climate in Northern Fla., like around Jacksonville. USDA zone temps can be extremely misleading as they are meant only to show the minimum WINTER lows and not much else. Zone 9a Fla. and an estimated Zone 9a in the U.K are extremely different, especially for evergreen plants like boxwood. Jacksonville's average temp in June is 90, while Bristol U.K.'s is 67 F. Add in the Fla. humidity and daily thunderstorms and its mostly a different planet....
I am in Va. and I get hot damp summers too. I plant boxwood in very free-draining soil. They hate wet feet and will slowly die off with heavier soil without much organics. A typical bonsai mix with 70 percent haydite and 30 percent composted pine bark or orchid bark will work fine.
I have also worked with large boxwood over 150 years. Those kinds of old plantation landscape plants are very hard to work into bonsai unless there is some kind of interest in the old trunk in the first foot. If it's a straight beanpole that's 8-12 inches in diameter, it's crappy material. It's also crappy if there are over three trunks coming from the same root. Those rarely have any surface nebari to work with.
IF you can find big old boxwood with trunks like this, all bets are off...
just.wing.it
Deadwood Head
I have also had trouble with boxwood in the past...
The one I haven't killed yet is a Korean Little Leaf Boxwood...
I did a major too and bottom reduction in spring of 16...it moped and sulked through 16 & 17... This year I put it into a "colander", and it's definitely doing better, it grew a little bit this spring...but still not taking off yet.
The one I haven't killed yet is a Korean Little Leaf Boxwood...
I did a major too and bottom reduction in spring of 16...it moped and sulked through 16 & 17... This year I put it into a "colander", and it's definitely doing better, it grew a little bit this spring...but still not taking off yet.
