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Northwestern Gardening

questions on pruning to shape an arbutus

20 years ago

I have a strawberry tree about 8 x 8 feet, misshapen from the fact that it half-died then came back and filled out (5 years ago), then was bowed down by a hard rain last spring and never sprang back up -- it just grew more vertical shoots out of the bowed limbs.

Can these take brutal pruning to begin shaping it, and then use more gentle pruning in the future? I don't want to shear but to selectively remove parts which might be 1 to 2 years old. Thank you.

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Comments (4)

Embothrium
20 years ago
Sounds like a plan.
grant_in_seattle
20 years ago
My last garden had a nice overgrown strawberry tree and it tolerated hard pruning quite well. I've seen several others that have receieve major pruning and done really well. I'd say go for it. Let us know how it works out.

Take care,
Grant
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mfm_seattle
Original Author
20 years ago
Thanks for the encouragement! It turned out better than I expected. I am going to post photos either here or in a gallery as soon as I find out how -- tried to post them here using html and they didn't show, so will look it up later when I have more time. Thanks again.

I went on to thin and prune a ceanothus too and it also turned out good. That's always a real wrestling match!

-Fran
grant_in_seattle
20 years ago
Great! I'm glad it went so well. Let us know when/where you post pics.

Take care,
Grant

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