Advice wanted on yew

[daudelus]

I collected about 8 yews from a hedgerow about 3 years ago and this is one of them... I haven't done much of anything to them except fertilize, water, and trimmed back the very leggy branches that were not going to be useful later on.


I determined the front would be slightly to the right from this angle... after some cleaning out and trying to wrap my head around what direction to go in, I was left with this ...



It's still fairly full... I personally have trouble making the "big leap" to cut out a lot without knowing where I want to go... The trunk follows up and forks into a fairly even split... the right side, as you look at it, has more options in terms of sub-branching whereas the left is fairly straight with more strong branching up high, which I believe is just too high to be used. I've considered making a significant part of the left side into a deadwood feature which would mean reducing its length considerably. I would upload my own rough virtual but imgur seems to be down currently... any ideas with this limited info given? Thanks!

 

[daudelus]

Here you can get a sense of how the left side is fairly uninteresting even though there is a branch coming off the back side...



Here's a shot of the back... some branches removed and to be carved later...you can see why this is the chosen backside (ugly knuckle root)...

 

[BobbyLane]

Its a bit hard to say without having the tree in hand! it looks like you could use a few of those trunks in the design, whether as dead features and live areas. you need to carry on thinning it out, keep all the thicker, woody, stronger shoots and prune off all the young, leggy bits, weak bits and adventitious shoots and buds that wont be needed. with such a powerful trunk, you wont need the spindly bits and it looks like its well established, healthy and ready for some work. once you've thinned it out a little, you'll have a better idea, show us again. nice material btw

the first vid will give you a good idea of how to tackle that

watch all of Graham potters videos on styling yew trees.

 

[Vance Wood]

I have not read through you entire post or viewed all of the videos but out of concern for you I wanted to make sure you understood that the wood of Yew is toxic and you should ware a mask or resporator to keep from inhaling the dust. Another thing about them is the fact that their wood is very hard and difficult to bend and hard to break.

 

[daudelus]

Thanks for the video links! I have watched them many times before and they always make things look easy... it's the difficult part of working any tree...they are all different! I will work to clean it up in the near future and post images then.

 

[daudelus]

I have not read through you entire post or viewed all of the videos but out of concern for you I wanted to make sure you understood that the wood of Yew is toxic and you should ware a mask or resporator to keep from inhaling the dust. Another thing about them is the fact that their wood is very hard and difficult to bend and hard to break.

Thanks Vance... I had known about the toxicity, but hadn't thought about the wood.. just the leaves and berries... I will definitely remember to wear a mask when doing the deadwoood.

 

[BobbyLane]

Studying trees/yew trees/deadwood on yew trees will give you more ideas too. Then of course we all have differing tastes, i have no idea whether youre a fan of short stocky powerful stumps or formal uprights with great taper.i usually look at real images of trees and decide what type of image the material fits into.there are many images of yew trees that look like this.

 

[GrimLore]

I collected about 8 yews from a hedgerow about 3 years ago and this is one of them... I haven't done much of anything to them except fertilize, water, and trimmed back the very leggy branches that were not going to be useful later on.

Good job on the collection and even a better job on the patience letting them come back and grow healthy - serious.

Now, if you are itching to do anything look at the big picture and design what makes or will make you happy. Keep in mind that deadwood on larger specimens can by themselves become art that enhances the plant - sooooooooooooooooo don't get rid of it unless you have a sound plan.

Yew in our region are hard to kill once established as you have done and is nice to see!

Plan, plan, and plan some more - lots of potential if you continue with your patience

Grimmy

 

[daudelus]

Good job on the collection and even a better job on the patience letting them come back and grow healthy - serious.

Thanks for the feedback on the collection! They all look about the same with substantial trunks that flair off about 6-8 inches up from the soil line...I must have done something correctly, they are all still alive!! I'll try my best to keep it that way!

 

[Vance Wood]

The problem I see you encountering as things go along is in allowing the secondary growth to become too large before you decide to work on it. If you notice Ghram Potter's videos he does not deal a lot with older secondary growth too much.

 

[daudelus]

So, cutting back secondary branches to a fairly strong tertiary branch, letting that grow out for taper and proportion?

 

[Vance Wood]

So, cutting back secondary branches to a fairly strong tertiary branch, letting that grow out for taper and proportion?

That's one way to look at it but you should be more interested to having branches that you can bend effectively without having them assume these weird elliptical shapes. Yes branches are very strong and also very flexible, that's why the wood was used in making bows up until the advent of fire arms. In fact Yew forests were protected in Europe as a strategic material and only certain other people could accesses the wood without provoking the wrath of government. In case you are interested the wood was used in the manufacturing of musical instruments for the same reason it was used for bows.

 

[daudelus]

I guess I might need to make my first attempt at bending with raffia

 

[Vance Wood]

That could be true but you know raffia does not make it easier to bend just easier to use extremely heavy wire.

 

[sorce]

I wonder if you can't just take the slow road and wire those new baby shoots.

There would end up a lot of jins, and it would take a long time, but you seem to have the new shoots for it.

At least leave them so if you snap a branch you have other options...

Beautiful base!

Sorce

 

[Vance Wood]

The owner should go through all of the Ghram Potter videos, he has done a couple of really spectacular Yews and the transformations have been dramatic and beautiful.

 

[Giga]

I really don't see what you can make of this, best just send it my way I'll put it in my garden.....

 

[daudelus]

That could be true but you know raffia does not make it easier to bend just easier to use extremely heavy wire.

I just meant I haven't bent larger branches and know that raffia can protect some from breaking or really causing irreversible damage when trying to put movement into them.

 

[parhamr]

Some of those branches could benefit from gradually-adjusted guy wires. Some could be wrapped and wired. Others could be given normal wiring.

In summary: get to work on wiring and styling? It appears to be a beautiful, healthy, and unique tree. Your efforts will be rewarded!

 

[Bonsai Nut]

In the case of this particular tree I think your biggest challenge is going to be with the twin trunks. Try to ignore all the superfluous growth and focus only on the "bones" of the tree and you will see what looks like a perfect slingshot. I think resolving those twin trunks is going to drive your design.

Without having the tree in front of me, and given the nice base, I would chose one or the other, and jin up the one that I didn't want to use. Then it would just be a question of removing thick branches as fast as you could without jeopardizing the health of the tree, and replacing the old thick growth with new thin growth that could be wired and would also work better with the scale of your final design.