you have a lot of expectations on a large transplant one year after planting ...

its going to take another year before its established... if not a third year .... and until then ... every leaf is a energy making machine.. leave them all there ...

lets look at again next year ...

tree time is counted in decades ... and its simply going to take time to grow to your expectation ... and it is beyond me.. peeps who want to cut parts off to speed said process ...

just be patient ...

ken

Yeah, I would say once the tree gets established -- has a really good root system --- then you can start to think about cutting back limbs. This may be next season. So when you're ready, maybe just cut a few limbs back at a time. Make sure the limb gets sun, and it will shoot out from latent buds.

Yeah, it's gonna look gawky for a while. It's going to take 2 to 3 years before you can get all the longest limbs cut back.

Magnolias in cooler climates tend to grow more leggy.

OK, yeah I'm not really in a major rush about anything, just want to do what's best for the tree. It really put on so much length last year and is so skinny with large 2' spans of trunk without a limb I thought it might be better for it to stay a little more compact as it acclimates. But your point about ever leave counting really makes sense especially in it's state, I'll just give it some time and yell at the squirrels whenever I see them playing on it.

yeah I'm not really in a major rush about anything, just want to do what's best for the tree.

==>> well.. good.. but try not to love it to death in the meantime ...

where are you in new england.. and how far north do southern mags thrive???

big city name would help...

ken

Basic issue is that leaves are timing out and dropping prematurely. So the thing to do is figure out the cause of this and correct it. Rather than whacking the plant back, only to have the same original problem continue. Now in addition to the whacking back.

It's squirrels breaking of the new growth. It doesn't drop that many leaves on it's . But its growth pattern is pretty leggy even before the squirrels do their damage.

I'm near Hartford in zone 6a.

I can see in your picture that leaves are dropping too soon. One possible cause for this is foliage mildew, otherwise maybe it is a watering or soil minerals problem.

A southern magnolia in zone 6a is never going to look like a southern magnolia in Alabama. They grow leggy here. Do not prune. It won't encourage a more compact tree. Fewer leaves will diminish its ability to generate fuel for growth. Give it TLC and hope for a look you can live with after two more years.

from plants.usda.gov:

Southern magnolia primarily grows in the southeastern US and the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain in USDA Hardiness Zone 6–10 (Dirr, 1998). Southern magnolia is native from Maryland south to Florida and west to Texas. Cold-hardy cultivars can be grown as far north as southern Ohio, northern New Jersey, and Long Island.

Missouri Botanical Garden, a very reliable source for all things plant, has it listed as zone 7-9 here: http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=c117. I think that's more honest. I choose plants and trees that list zone 5 even though I'm supposedly living in 6a.

• @liquidfeet Z6 Boston Yes, I know I was spoiled seeing them all down south like giant masses of shiny green. I do have the Bracken's Brown Beauty variety, that the Missouri site mentions in the text as being 5b, but I'm sure your point about being more leggy still holds true.

@ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5 you asked upthread

how far north do southern mags thrive???

The most northern southern magnolias in New England are in Ravenswood Park in Gloucester, MA. You'd never recognize these thin, leggy, shrub-like plants as southern magnolias. They are protected from the deer by chain-link fences because of their rarity. When I am on the trails in this part of the park, the Magnolia Swamp, I always stop to look for the magnolias, trying to identify them in the undergrowth. They are hard to find. I've never been there when they bloom, so all I have to go on is knowing they are there and their long dark leaves.

You can read the history of these trees here in this link:

http://gloucester.harborwalk.org/wp-content/uploads/10Magnolia_sweet-bay.pdf

liquidfeet, thanks for linking the article from Arnoldia. That article is of course about the Sweetbay Magnolia, not Southern Magnolia. For comparison here is a pic of flowering southern magnolia blooming today in Maryland.

@sam_md, whoops. Right. Here's a comparison of sweetbay vs southern magnolia.

https://bplant.org/compare/137-279