I was fortunate to take a yew workshop with Steve Tolley at the National Arboretum yesterday. The material was really nice - field grown yews supposedly 40+ years old with 3-4"+ bases with pretty good character.
Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of my yew from the workshop at the moment. It looks like it can lend itself to a slanting style tree, or maybe a semi-cascade. This would probably be the quickest tree I could develop given where the branches are. As an alternative, Tolley suggested bringing up a very flexible whip as the new trunk line, and putting lots of movement into it. He mentioned that this was a technique often performed in Japan.
The question I had is how long does it take yew branches to thicken up? The flexible branch I'm looking at is probably about 1/2" in diameter, but it's coming off the part of the trunk that is probably closer to 2" in diameter. While that approach would work, I'm wondering if it might take forever for that whip to thicken up to the point of having a nice image (if it took the trunk 40 years to get to a 4" base, it leads me to think that it will take a long while for me to get a decent thickness out of the whip in a reasonable amount of time).
Thanks in advance!
Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of my yew from the workshop at the moment. It looks like it can lend itself to a slanting style tree, or maybe a semi-cascade. This would probably be the quickest tree I could develop given where the branches are. As an alternative, Tolley suggested bringing up a very flexible whip as the new trunk line, and putting lots of movement into it. He mentioned that this was a technique often performed in Japan.
The question I had is how long does it take yew branches to thicken up? The flexible branch I'm looking at is probably about 1/2" in diameter, but it's coming off the part of the trunk that is probably closer to 2" in diameter. While that approach would work, I'm wondering if it might take forever for that whip to thicken up to the point of having a nice image (if it took the trunk 40 years to get to a 4" base, it leads me to think that it will take a long while for me to get a decent thickness out of the whip in a reasonable amount of time).
Thanks in advance!