Dave wrote:

Chop/remove of 3/4 of the leaves.

The plants seem to be doing a pretty good job of this themselves.... but
I'll give it a go.

Normally, if anything is transplanted, you remove much of the leaf mater
to reduce stress on the plants to provide water for transpiration.


They are about 1m high, 50 odd cm wide.

I have a gum that we transplated at similar size, but the soil just fell
off when we took it out of the pot. We hacked all but a few leaves and
it eventually came good, but I would still say it is struggling (leaf
attack, etc).