Happened to be driving along with the family when I noticed this Taxus pulled out of the ground laying in a front yard. Looked promising, pulled over, asked the owner and they were happy to be rid of it.
Brought it back, cleared out the garden soil, potted in pure turface and its already pushing new buds inside a week. Not too surprising because it had a pretty large root ball with a mess of fine feeder roots.
I'll leave it be for at least this season, probably next as well before I do anything further.
That said, I always like to plan and this one seems to have two options:
(1) Bend the long leader (I've tested it a bit with a branch bender and it will extend vertically) upward making it an informal upright; or
(2) a semi cascade by taking the present leader (there's also a second thinner and easier bending branch that runs parallel to it) and bending it upward, then taking one of the three branches located in the inside of the first curve and bending them downward.
I suppose I could do something slanting as well.
Also, the exposed nebari has a few crossing roots that will need to go, but the nebari below the soil line is nearly perfectly radial. Pretty nice stuff. I buried it to hopefully developed roots closer into the trunk line allowing me to safely remove the crossing roots and shorten the longer subsurface roots. The base is 4 to 5 inches across.
The main trunk line has an extensive broken up line of exposed shari and natural jin as well. The shari line has some well developed scarring along the edges as well.
I'd appreciate any thoughts, suggestions, honest criticisms, etc.
Brought it back, cleared out the garden soil, potted in pure turface and its already pushing new buds inside a week. Not too surprising because it had a pretty large root ball with a mess of fine feeder roots.
I'll leave it be for at least this season, probably next as well before I do anything further.
That said, I always like to plan and this one seems to have two options:
(1) Bend the long leader (I've tested it a bit with a branch bender and it will extend vertically) upward making it an informal upright; or
(2) a semi cascade by taking the present leader (there's also a second thinner and easier bending branch that runs parallel to it) and bending it upward, then taking one of the three branches located in the inside of the first curve and bending them downward.
I suppose I could do something slanting as well.
Also, the exposed nebari has a few crossing roots that will need to go, but the nebari below the soil line is nearly perfectly radial. Pretty nice stuff. I buried it to hopefully developed roots closer into the trunk line allowing me to safely remove the crossing roots and shorten the longer subsurface roots. The base is 4 to 5 inches across.
The main trunk line has an extensive broken up line of exposed shari and natural jin as well. The shari line has some well developed scarring along the edges as well.
I'd appreciate any thoughts, suggestions, honest criticisms, etc.
