Sounds like a good idea. I have a bunch too. Never thought of growing them as trees. Have you tried posting on the Shrub forum? Maybe the Tree Forum.
Might get more information.

Jane

Shrubs

They used to have some 20 ft tall Sweet Viburnums limbed up in this fashion that surrounded the Tropical section of the Discovery Gardens. My brain wants to say last time I was there they had cut the ones on the south side down to about 3-4 ft tall and were letting them resprout into a hedge. I don't remember if the ones on the west side were still limbed up or not. They're not single trunk specimens and neither is mine with both having 4 trunks. I just used that intro as a segue. Mine are now about 4 ft and with the amount of growth that they put on over this winter, I imagine that by the end of summer then will be over 6 ft. I could be putting shade loving plants in that area this time next year. *fingers crossed*

And I always give my fellow Florida Gardeners first crack at questions before moving on to more specific forums. As has been mentioned before, there's usable knowledge and then there's usable localized knowledge.

Neverthelss Michael, come on over to Trees. We don't bite over there-well okay, maybe I do sometimes-but lots of good people that like to help. And although I'm relatively klutzy when it comes to posting pics and such, that's likely the first thing you'll read when you post there-where's the pictures, lol.

+oM

I make trees out of about everything. I first pick out one strong stem to be the leader, support it with a piece of rebar and then prune off the rest. Allowing only one stem to grow makes a thick trunk in time. I have done both scraped the new growth off with my thumb or pruned them off. You can decide at what height you want it to branch, most time I choose just over my head so I can walk under it to weed. But that doesn't work with short shrubs like ixorias. I have even made trees out of woody stem vines by supporting them with the rebar until the trunk is strong enough to stand on it's own. Of course the viney part must by cut off in time. Hope this helps.

Michael, I haven't seen you here in a long time (I miss you!) but I'm hoping you'll see this post via email. Come around here when you can.

How are your Viburnum trees working out? For years, I've been tempted to do a viburnum in tree form, but I've run out of tree space.

Carol