I spent a couple of hours Saturday at my new favorite nursery. This nursery
is quite a few acres of field, all planted with landscaping material. Some
of the plants have been there for 15-20 years and kept small and compact by
the owner. I saw a small Taxus with a 3+" nebari that stood less than 1 1/2
ft. tall! Apparantly, about 15 years ago an elderly Japanese gentleman came
and "cleaned him out" as he said, for Bonsai stock. Anyway, I spent all of
my "allowance" on 2 really nice Taxus (plural Taxi ? ;-)), a twin trunk
boxwood (that looks 10 - 15 years old), and a Chinese Juniper. One of the
Taxus and the Juniper are so compact and dense with foliage that it is
really hard to see what to cut away. My question is this: does anyone have
some practical advice, after doing this for many years, on how to deal with
this situation. I don't want to just go in there and start hacking away,
but these two treees are SO dense; I can't see into them well enough to
visualize where I'm going. Now this is mostly from the halfway point and
above - I picked them for the roots, trunk and primary (lower) branches.
However, now that I've "neatened up" the bottom third, I'm stuck.

Thanks,

Jeff Isom
Cleveland, OH / Sunset Zone 39 - and sunny now for the 3rd day in a row

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