I have to "edit" my Green Giant arbs, growing out into the roadway and also crowding my sourwood. Not too much work, tho. Other kinds of editing crops up at times too. Had to totally "edit" the smallest of my pond cypresses as it was shading my pond pine.

I also had to totally edit (erase) some trees that were beginning to shade my floodplain baldcypress plantings, including a planted river birch that wasn't particularly attractive (alot of yellow leaves in mid-summer) and a volunteer black walnut (which along w/black cherry are scourges on my lot).

Usually if an arb is crowding something, it is the arb that gets trimmed. With other species I also will occasionally I let the plants fight it out.

tj

I agree with letting perennials duke it out, but shrubs & trees (especially) not so much.

Here’s another situation I suspect I’ll eventually have to deal with, and probably sooner than later. To the left of this P. strobus ’Vercurve’ is Picea ’Mac’s Gold’, and to the right (and behind) is Abies concolor. I don’t think pruning will suffice here.

If push comes to shove, I know which one I’d remove. What say you?

That sounds like a traditional type of garden editing. I tried to salvage and transplant an overgrown Juniperus procumbens 'Nana' this past April, hope it survives at its new location. It clearly liked its previous location, it was a vibrant bright green, at its new location it is a darker green, but nothing more serious so far, wish me luck!

What say you? Join me, and I will hold your oaths fulfilled...

maackia, you have alot of spruce/fir types around the white pine. The white pine offers "softness" in there that mellows the scene. So.......

I wonder if you can plan your garden edits ahead of time. For example, being able to say 'I plan to edit this gardenbed in 5 years' by knowing growth rates, and choosing plant spacings.

How accurately can that be done?