Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie2
I have a Eucalyptus (er indoors choice not mine) its about 3 yrs old around 5inch girth and centre grew up 12ft with other side branches around 6ft.
Ladder job to cut the main centre branch and one side branch all done last week beginning Sept. Now heard I could have made it more manageable as a bush form just pruning vigorous branches off to keep the growth in check.
Can I do it with this by cutting the trunk down to 4feet and training new growth or is it too late?.
Many thanks.
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I'm sorry to tell you that you were pruning it at the wrong time of year, about as wrong as you could be. Since Eucs never go completely dormant, the risk of pruning it now is that it will have enough activity for the buds to shoot now, and then those shoots won't get ripened and so will be vulnerable to frost. I wouldn't touch it any more now, but adjust the pruning as appropriate next Feb/March in accordance with the proper pruning instructions here.
Eucalyptus: pruning / Royal Horticultural Society
The alternative approach, which will prove to be less work in the long run, is to source a smaller kind of Euc - these do exist but can be harder to source as the commonly supplied ones are mostly monsters. Then you can rip out your monster and grow that instead. Euc. gregsoniana is a notable small eucalypt (max 20 ft in normal garden conditions - though there is a much bigger one a Wisley) and very attractive. Euc. crenulata is a little bigger but is probably my favourite. E. pauciflora and its variants are a bit bigger still, but are easier to source than other non-monstrous ones. Here is a source on hardy eucalypt species describing their properties.
The Hardy Eucalyptus Page