I have a number of newish trees (2-3 yrs old) and they have branches sprouting at the base. See attached pic. Is this normal and if so, why? If not, what should I do about it?
Acer campestre are the bottom leaves....you have a nice standard tree with a straight trunk In order to keep it like that I suggest you remove any/all the side branches as soon as they appear. If very tiny just use your fingers to rub the buds away. In this case you need secateurs. Otherwise you will have branches all the way up from the ground.
None of them are standards, just the normal silver birch and a few multistemmed flowering cherry blossoms. The above pic is of a liquidambar and this pic below is a flowering cherry blossom.
The liquidambar seems obvious where to lop off given your advice bc they are more like clusters around the trunk rather than branches and it’s not uniformly spaced on the tree. So best just to clean it all up.
The cherry blossom (see pic) is less obvious. Where to take off? There is about a 1m of established branches and low down a further 1m of new shots. There is uniformity to these two sections? Any advice?
Unless it’s a fastigiate variety I would remove the shoots growing at the base and on the lower part of the trunk so that there’s a reasonable length of clear trunk. Low branches can cause problems for the gardener when mowing later on as the tree gets bigger.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
According to my RHS pruning book, if you want a young tree to have a clear trunk, each year (at an appropriate time depending on the variety) you remove all the branches from the bottom third of the tree, half the length of the branches growing from the middle third, and leave the top third alone except for removing anything diseased/damaged/dead. When the bottom third is the height of trunk that you want, you're done except for routine maintenance pruning (rubbing out anything that grows from the base or trunk and removing dead/diseased etc bits from the head of the tree). I am trying it with a couple of fancy types of Sorbus that I bought as very young whips for a few quid each - it seems to be working.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
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In order to keep it like that I suggest you remove any/all the side branches as soon as they appear.
If very tiny just use your fingers to rub the buds away.
In this case you need secateurs.
Otherwise you will have branches all the way up from the ground.
The cherry blossom (see pic) is less obvious. Where to take off? There is about a 1m of established branches and low down a further 1m of new shots. There is uniformity to these two sections? Any advice?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.