Training a Standard Tree
Hello I'm new to this forum (and new to gardening). I've recently had some conifers removed and have replaced them with 4 cherry laurels. I want to train these into standard trees. At the moment they are about 3 ft tall and have a good upright steam. The garden centre I purchased them from had been pinching them out. So I have chosen a central leader and attached the trees to a bamboo cane and have removed the lowest branches/ suckers). what I am unsure of is
1) should I remove all the other branches until the top bud reaches the desired final height? (In which case my boundary between my neighbour & my front gardens will look very sparse!) or can I remove these braniches later, so that the trees look a bit more bushy in the meantime?
2) I'm unsure about pinching out, when to do this and what impact this will have on each tree. Some are currently more bushy than others.
Any advice or pointers greatfully received!
Posts
It'll be interesting to see if you've picked a good tree to turn into a standard! My initial thought is that you haven't! (sorry). Laurels are quite vigorous and become bushy the more you cut them back, so it's difficult to see how you're going to keep the trunk free from new growth (without working excessively hard on it). They usually throw out suckers too. Anyway, to be more helpful...
1 - You can remove the branches later so it might be best to maintain the tree 'looking nice' throughout. As they respond so well to pruning you're not going to kill the tree off or anything like that.
2 - The more you pinch the bushier it gets. So, the answer is likely a combination of pinching the top branches a little bit and removing the bottom ones (if applicable) as it grows. It's easy to make them bushy so I'd worry first about making consistent height across your trees than consistent 'bushiness'.
Ok, thank you for this honest & helpful response! so if I am understanding you correctly, it is not my choice of specimen that is poor, but more my choice of shrub? i.e. laurels do not easily make good standard trees? I do have a tendency to always choose the most difficult path! I had come across the image above which is where I got my inspiration from. I had ruled out red robin as this site can be quite windy - and living in Aberdeenshire, I was less sure of how well other popular standards would weather the harsh winter conditions here. Cost was another important consideration- so yew, box and bay were all out. These were just £10 each. So, as long as it is possible, I am willing to roll my sleeves up. If it proves impossible - I might enlist my children in some of the maintenance! Or failing that - I may have to rip them out and start again.
Thank you for your response. I'll perservere with the until they reach the desired height and try my best to keep on top of any branches which emerge from the bottom of the trunk.
Good luck, Claire. It'll certainly look impressive when you have them like that picture. It'll be interesting to see some pictures and hear about your experience.
I'm new to this forum (2020) and hoping to train some standards as you are doing (using photinias) and wondered how your laurels were faring as it's been 3 years since you posted on this? Hopefully it's working out well . . .
Any tips would be gratefully received.
Well thankfully people like you and I have a bit more optimism than some! By the wonders of email notifications - here I am resurrected from my Gardeners World abyss to respond to you lol.
As I admitted, I do not have green fingers - so one of my Laurels didn’t make it. The others have done okay - though I’ve yet to prune them this year. They look a bit like everyone lacking their haircuts at the moment.
Warm regards,
Claire