I've gone yew crazy lately. I love the look of them. I picked up this BnB yew yesterday for $40. I've been watching a lot of Bonsai Mirai videos lately and the take away and the change in me is to respect the timing of trees and not just do what ever I want when I want, which is how I used to work. I would have styled the hell out of this thing immediately in a frenzy. Its killing me to take it slow but I think having to stare at it all winter will help me form a better design idea and end up with a better and happier tree.
It was bagged in thick clay so I just removed the large chucks of clay that had no roots in it. I then lightly teased out the edges of the root ball and planted it in a large pot and watered it with Rhizotonic. Come spring, I'll style the rest.
Well, Ryan neil often picks up healthy, nursery stock and works on them right away. absolutely nothing wrong with doing some work on a healthy yew tree or any tree. its more the recently collected trees that folk tend to be more careful with. where im located, its a good time to work on yew trees.
but yeh. if nothing jumps out of you in terms of styling ideas, then best left alone until an idea pops up. bear in mind, that when a tree like this does start to grow again , many of the 'keeper' branches will be shaded out by a lot of unwanted bits you chose to leave on it.
i have a similar one, from a recent nursery trip. its a lot weaker than yours though, it was slip potted and most of the soil fell away, barely any feeder roots. the foliage looks healthy, but it had scale over the summer. so for these reasons all i did was, lop a bit off the top and thinned it out slightly, just to remove dead branches, twigs, needles and let a little light in, you can just about see through it now, thats good enough until spring. hopefully it will regain health and vigour and i could do something on it later next summer.
20180926_164008 by
Bobby Lane, on Flickr
i think it will be fine to thin yours out a little to get some light and airflow in
dont be sold on the reducing to one trunk line thing though, you have a lot of options with all those branches and some could be kept and jinned to add character. yews in nature tend to grow as brooms
Ormiston Yew Tree by
Raycce, on Flickr
1700 Year Old Yew Tree. Alton Priors. Wiltshire, England by
standhisround, on Flickr
ancient yew Taxus baccata by
Eloy Revilla, on Flickr
these are from the net, some nice 'broomy' examples. depends what you like i guess!
