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| August 2010 - as I received it |
As we have a large Abelia growing in our garden, I already had a few little trees which I'd grown from cuttings, but this one's trunk had a lot more character than my others, aside from one flaw - some nasty reverse taper right at the base:
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| Interesting trunk with a really skinny base |
My first step was to move it into a deeper pot but, perhaps unwisely, I made no attempt at layering it. In effect I was hiding the reverse taper rather than dealing with it.
By October 2011 I had a couple of new branches.
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| October 2011 - before pruning |
It was time to get rid of the handlebars and select a new leader.
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| October 2011 - after pruning |
Over the next couple of years it grew quite well, and with a few trims it was starting to look quite good. In the spring of 2013 I moved it to a bonsai pot (another gift) in time for the club show. The deep pot was not ideal but it was the only way to hide the reverse taper.
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| October 2013 |
Not much happened over the next two years during which it made a couple more appearances on club shows. Then, when I was looking for trees to display at last October's show, I discovered that I'd been paying this one too little attention and that it was in no condition to go on show.
Still I did nothing. I had too many other trees that needed my attention.
Finally today I decided it was time to fix up some of the mess. My tree now had some vigorous growth where I didn't want it - like the branch heading up to the top of the photo - while there was a lot of die-back to branches I really needed.
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| January 2017 - before pruning |
I've now removed all the dead branches as well as a couple of upward growing ones that didn't belong and shortened everything else to encourage back-budding.
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| January 2017 - after pruning |
Once I see how it develops I'll have decide whether I want to revert to the style of 2013 or whether to try to develop a slightly larger tree. And next spring I really need to see if I can pot it a bit lower as the reverse taper is starting to show again.
