Thuja Occidentalis Smaragd- leaf pruning help

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North Auckland (whangaparaoa), New Zealand
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Hi All,

Just trying to learn how to leaf prune a Smaragd, does anyone have any useful links/information on what to do? the fan like leaves (are they leaves?) are really big and i'd like to work at reducing them. Thanks for all your help
 

cbroad

Omono
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Emerald Green?

I've heard people say culture should be similar to hinokis, you'll probably find more info about these and less about arborvitae.
 

Mike Hennigan

Chumono
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Hi All,

Just trying to learn how to leaf prune a Smaragd, does anyone have any useful links/information on what to do? the fan like leaves (are they leaves?) are really big and i'd like to work at reducing them. Thanks for all your help

What you are thinking of as the leaves, are what I call fronds, and are really more like branches made up of many many leaves, in a way. I pulled this image off the web and hopefully it should make clear what actually are the “leaves” of a thuja.
0C78EEE0-5BB0-457E-98B0-8EA854E192AD.jpeg
You can see that the leaves are each of the tiny little sections that make up the larger frond. When pruning a frond, usually what you want to do is cut back to where there is branching in the foliage, so like this red line might be an example of where you would prune to shorten a frond...

F4FDBFFE-C691-4700-924A-B988661ABEB7.jpeg

Hope that helps
 
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