Oh dear. Poor, poor Camellia. Judging by the size of the trunk it's pretty old. Such a pity. I'd be tempted to cut it down to the ground, or wherever you want the top to branch from and hope it shoots from the base. I don't think tinkering with the top will get very far. In fact I'd cut them all down and cross my fingers.

I don't think I should cut it down to the base, because it's planted so close to the porch, and if it grew into a full shrubby form there it would be awkward. I'm thinking I'll thin out the top and see how promising it looks, but taking it out (or trying to; I've heard how difficult camellias are to kill) is sadly an option.

I want to take whoever planted it there and shake them by the shoulders hollering WHY WHY WHY.

Well, if there isn't room for it to be itself I'd have to say I'd move it or ditch it.

Camellia by front walk could easily be left to assume a natural size and shape, without any additional pruning other than keeping the one side out of the way. In time it would form a tree-like specimen that served to soften the angles of the house, as is often done with intentional planting of trees in front of - or at the corners of - houses for this specific purpose. However, as this particular house has a geometrically symmetric facade this is actually a situation that calls for formal planting with matching pairs of sheared shrubs, straight lines and so forth - something people with asymmetric house facades want to do to varying extents (often with matching pairs flanking the front door area, in the midst of otherwise informal planting) all the time but can never pull off because their houses have the wrong design for it.

peeps mangle and butcher shrubs.. because they improperly plant them ... too close to the house .. with no concept of their potential size ...

never forget.. foundation plantings are planted to HIDE the foundation ... NOT ON THE FOUNDATION...

it should become obvious to you ... that the C should have been planted 10 to 15 feet further from its current spot.. eh???

increase the front bed to 10 feet or so .. and plant some new things.. so that in a few years you can remove all your ugly poodles ...

you can mess around with TRYING to retrain them into some nice new shape ... but i am thinking.. that sooner or later.. you will be giving up ... so why not get some small cheaper stuff going.. as replacements ..

i dont mind renovation projects out somewhere on my 5 acres... but i would never attempt such.. out the front door of my castle ... its just not the location for an ugly renovation project .... and trust me.. it will probably be ugly for a couple years.. while you try to retrain it ...


ken

Nymphette, just popping in to say I enjoy your terminology in this thread! Meatballs indeed.

Embothrium makes a good point-that formally-sheared is not always wrong, and goes on to explain when and why that is acceptable. That said, I know I'd not be satisfied with the look you've been left with. In particular, those lone shrubs...er...meatballs out in the yard are just plain silly-looking. You've intuited that this might be a struggle, to get these things out of their too-tight growth forms. I'm just guessing here-I don't live near you-but don't plants grow quickly in the PNW? I think I might opt to start over, with stuff I actually want. As to the 'why' of such shrub treatments, I think in nearly every case, it's monkey see, monkey do.

+oM

Yeah, I think the thought process went "whoops, these are getting too big! Better 'trim' them!" and then the mow'n'blow guys came in with the hedge trimmers and sheared off all the outside growth. Rinse and repeat.

It was done to various extents as well with the shrubs in the otherwise lovely shade garden so now I've inherited forsythias, for example, that would be lovely except they've been chopped off in random places and generally reduced to a walking stick with an awkward bunch of flowers on one side. (I've cut them at 6" to start over.) At least they were able to resist fooling with the beautiful rhodies!

I thought Ken's "ugly poodles" was excellent, myself.

I'm not a fan of formal plantings, but of course I do plan to create similar visual "weights" on both sides of the house, and oh yes the front beds are getting increased.

I'm of two minds about the camellia. On the one hand, the pieris and the rhodie on that side of the house turned out to be really nice when I let them grow out of their poodle cuts for a year and thinned them into small tree forms; they will be excellent four-season backbones for a bed in that area (the cotoneaster is going). I think removing the camellia would give the pieris the extra hour or so of sun it needs to not be quite so sad. On the other hand, that camellia's gorgeous old 10" trunk! And on the third hand, it really does make the house look lopsided.

Got it done real cheap too I hear, lol. You know what you're doing, it's just all decisions you must make, which option to take. That said, the more looks I take, the more I like thinking about your yard as more nearly a clean slate, other than the awesome fir, spruce, or Doug-tree out back although that could be in neighbor's yard. I like that and such scenes are so emblematic of the PNW, I think. That and the low, fairly wide-spreading shrub in front of Camellia. Plus cut to ground anything you're not sure of and seeing what you get. Can't hardly go wrong there. As far as that Camellia, I wish it was situated just a bit to our right. Too jammed up against porch, as I'm sure you realize. But you're clearly not having as much fun trying to fix and incorporate these elements, I think, as you would without such constraints. That applies to the tightly-sheared poodles, meatballs, hamburger buns, etc. This if some of the cut-down shrubs don't work out, Agree with florel, it will be hard to top-work them and at the same time, doing relatively little, as suggested by Embothrium, can often yield better-than-expected results. I'm not a purist, but I could see a wildflower/native meadow planting somewhere out along the border.

+oM

Ha! That "shrub" is an enormous sword fern :D I just cut it to the ground the other day. They're all over the north side of the house and mostly I leave them untrimmed but this one was encroaching on the walk. (Note to self, research dividing sword ferns.)

Some native dogwoods and evergreen huckleberries are in my plans for the new front beds as well an arbutus unedo 'compacta' on the south side of the house. I'm pretty sure a prune tree is going somewhere in that southeast corner (on the left of the picture) and I'll probably build a bed around it with shrubs and large perennials rather than sticking it out by itself like a lone bowling pin. I have a wildflower/pollinator garden planned, but it's at the back of the house. The area shown in the second picture is the site of a new blueberry hedge, and in the yard behind it my kitchen garden of raised beds.

The enormous cedar tree visible over the roof is ours as well. It's truly magnificent.

If the camellia by the front walk comes out I'll probably replace it with an evergreen clematis against the pillar.

Nice! I always enjoy the massed sword ferns in pics from your part of the world. One of my kids lived for a time in Southeast............Alaska, that is. They've got em there too.

+oM

just keep in mind ... you have a lot of rather useless lawn there .. especially in front ... why mow lawn ... when you can increase the size of your beds with properly planted plants ...

my first step in a new design.. is how i will be using the dead space.. aka lawn ... and how little need i have for most of it ...

so please do consider widening those beds out front ... and plant properly ...

ken

I would start over also.
Think lawn shape first. What's left over is beds. If you cut out beds first they will look like cutouts and interrupt the 'flow' of the lawn.
The Pieris can be saved and should be moved away from the window. It can grow in to a small tree and should be treated as such. I have several over ten feet high and still gaining altitude.
The Camellia is a japonica and will probably get blossom blight when it blooms. I prefer the sasanquahs which bloom in the winter and aren't afflicted with blossom blight. At first I thought you might be able to prune the Camelia in to a giant bonsai, but that would require a lot of continuous pruning to maintain it. Not worth it. Start over.
Now is a good time to move that fern. I've moved almost a hundred in the past few weeks.
Our native Dogwood gets anthracnose and looks terrible in leaf. Chinese Dogwood, Cornus kousa is preferable and resistant to the fungus.
Mike

Best compromise between tone set by house and desire for informal planting would probably be a cottage garden, with enclosing fencing and/or hedging and geometric beds defined by low clipped shrubs echoing the house facade but filled with tumbling exuberance of natural habit flowers and shrubs.

Without corresponding formal garden layout house is going to look like a tuxedo at a picnic.

Welp, as you say, Ken, I don't need *any* of that front lawn, and eventually I hope there will be none of it. I'll be chipping away at it year by year increasing the existing front beds and establishing new ones that will eventually flow together.

Mike, how much of a pain in the butt is that pieris going to be to move? Should I move it now or wait till fall? Should the rhodie move too?

Embothrium, personally I like the look of a modest symmetrical house softened by masses of asymmetrical, flowing plantings, so I'm not worried about it; don't like clipped hedges anyway.

I should get a pic of my Japanese maple for all of you. I think it may be original to the house. It's gorgeous, and the previous owner tells me that 10 or 12 years ago someone offered her $1800 for it.

If you don't balance the appearance of weight and solidity presented by your house with the structure provided by garden architecture (fencing) or architectural planting (clipped hedges or borders) the building is going to make the plantings look like fluff or smoke.

On a country estate with a big house presenting a symmetric facade the purpose of formal gardens is to provide a transition between the mass and rigidity of the mansion and the lightness and softness of the rural landscape around it, so that the house does not stand there in isolation like an alien space ship.

You have the same situation, on a smaller scale.

I took a pic of the lollipop camellia today. The trunk is only about a foot from the porch, so I've decided to take it out for sure.

The good news is, I measured the Pieris and it has room to grow up to 10' across right where it is. I don't know if that means I need to take out the rhodie behind it. I don't want to, honestly; it's turned out kind of pretty.

As a palate cleanser, my J maple. It's about 8' tall.

Yeah, that is a nice one!

+om

I'd sure like to prune that maple and thin the congested branches. And show a little leg too. As it is, you won't be able to see the curving trunk and branches when it leafs out. You'll have a blob.
That Pieris has been there a long time. I've moved them that big before. Success depends on proper digging, the type of soil it's in, and aftercare.
If you can't move it right away, you will have to wait until Fall. Planting in front of a window was a mistrake. Move the Rhododendron while you're at it.
You might as well start over and do it right, rather than trying to maintain the mistakes of the past.
Those white downspout extensions bother me. They should be rerouted and buried.

The maple already looks like somebody tried to stylize it, I'm not sure more limbing up and thinning would be an enhancement.

The camellia could be cut down and started over, it is even already making the suggestion itself with that one basal sprout. Digging out the roots of large old shrubs is not the work of a moment.

It never occurred to me to prune the Japanese maple ... to be honest I'm kind of terrified to touch it. But it is true that in leaf most of the trunk isn't visible. If you know of a good resource on pruning them I'd be glad to have it. The only weeping types I've seen pruned were sob-inducing butcher jobs, so.

I have a sumac and hollies to take out and I just hope to god the stump killer I bought will do the job, because there's no way I'm digging out the roots of all of them. I imagine if it does the job on sumac and holly it'll work on camellia. I'll still feel kind of like a murderer though ... have to keep telling myself it's a mercy killing. There's really not room for it to grow in a shrubby form from the base, at least not without more poodle trimming.

Krisitin, if you knew how much folks like me use "cut/treat" applications in our native restoration work, it would calm down your murderous fears. Here, I'm talking about getting rid of invasive shrub species in wild areas, but the point is, this method uses so little actual chemical, I don't think it's anything to worry about. And you're moving on to better things there, so no worries.

+oM

Oh, no, I've grown to be positively gleeful about using the right chemical for the right job. I used to be hardcore organic, but dealing with a yard full of bindweed cured me of that. I still avoid chucking poison around willynilly, but if I have to use it to deal with true nuisances like holly and ivy, I do it with a smile. Better living through chemistry!

I just meant it still seems like a shame to have to cut down such an old camellia with such a large pretty trunk. I keep reminding myself that whoever planted it there doomed it, not me.

Camellias are slow-growing - if you cut it off it will take many years to be of any height. In the meantime it will be much more attractive than it is now - I don't understand why it would have to be limbed up or sheared again, all you have to do is cut it back down again the next time - many years from now - it is starting to loom large.

The main problem for me would be if it was a cultivar that had flowers not to my particular taste, or excessively prone to damage.

I like the flowers well enough, but whoever said it would get some kind of blossom blight was right. I have another one on the south side of the house that's apparently identical but its blooms are fine and I've cut many for bouquets.

I can enhance that maple.
Kristin E-mail me at Mikebotann At gmail.
We can take before and after pics.
Mike, near Maple Valley, Wa.