Advice for a Juniper.

[Javaman4373]

My daughter had new siding put on her house and the workmen trampled a juniper foundation planting. It had broken limbs and quite a few dead branches. She gave it to me so I lifted it, potted it, and plan to see if I can do anything with it. The branches are too long and leggy and go too far before there is foliage. I tidied it up, removed dead material and the two places that had broken branches I secured the breaks with tape and wire. I don't know if they can heal or not, but I retained as much foliage as I could for now to help the tree develop roots in the pot. It did have quite a good root ball. The plan is to just see if it lives through the collection and then work on it next year. It is a free tree, so nothing tried, nothing gained. Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

[DonovanC]

Bump.
It’ll definitely need protection during the winter - if your garage is unheated, that would be a good place for it. Maybe put it back in the ground for a couple years to gain some strength.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

One style that I think works effectively when you have a juniper with thin trunk and long gangly branches is raft style - where you lay the trunk down along the ground and wire all the branches up as trunks - kinda like an instant forest. If you start to think of each branch as a separate trunk, you can see how they might wire up nicely and you could give them a little movement without requiring major technical work.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

You have your juniper in a nice pot, a cascade style pot. Another good style for junipers is the cascade, or the semi-cascade.

For the time being, I would just let it recover. Outdoors. When freezing weather comes, move it to an unheated garage or other sheltered area.

Actually for being trampled, it does not look bad at all. And it is relatively small for a landscape juniper. It will work fine as a bonsai.

 

[Javaman4373]

Will do Leo. I was wondering if the tree survives and is healthy next year, will pruning stimulate back budding so I can get foliage closer to the trunk and gradually shorten those long gangly branches?

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Will do Leo. I was wondering if the tree survives and is healthy next year, will pruning stimulate back budding so I can get foliage closer to the trunk and gradually shorten those long gangly branches?

Actually, it is vigorous growth that stimulates back budding. Get it growing well. Use a frequent, moderate dose of fertilizer. Let it get bushy and rangy. It will start back budding. Only THEN do you prune it back hard to get additional back buds to explode. It has to get healthy growth first, or it won't backbud. The pruning is the additional trigger, but only after it is healthy enough and vigorous enough to have started backbudding on its own.