Added another in spring 2009.
My plan is to keep both of them pruned up into small trees. The one in the Blueberry Garden has multiple twisted trunks that look kind of interesting. The one by the bathroom window has a single trunk and I am keeping it limbed up.
They both send up suckers all around the base, and some are far from the tree. Snip these off -- I need to do it several times a summer, and keep the suckers cut.
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| 5/17/13 5/14/13 |
In 2013 I finally started seeing the results of my pruning efforts. Each one has a different shape, but the open trunk below is beginning to show well on both of them.
I added one from Bosco's in ‘09. It's very densely twiggy. In the middle of summer 2010 (in the height of the heat and drought) I moved it from its original spot to the new garden in front of the dry creek bed. Ripped it out with absolutely no soil around its roots! Thought I killed it, but it went on to become a nice small tree.
I started pruning both of them pretty aggressively all throughout 2012. I want them to be upright, tree-like.
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| 9/23/2012 Hard to imagine, but over a third of this shrub has now been removed. |
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| 9/26/2012 I might still remove that branch angling across |
Viburnum prunifolium is supposed to have great fall color, but they never have. Just some brown - reddishness in late October.
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| 5/17/13 10/26/13 |
The one in the Blueberry Garden is round headed and the one by the bathroom window is stiffly horizontal and tiered. Very different looking trees.
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| 5/26/13 |
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| 10/17/13 |
In fall the foliage color is subtle, sort of a rosy tint that turns bright brown at the end.
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| 11/6/13 |
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| 5/21/14 |
This one is turning into a lovely shape. Ignore the mesh deer protector around the trunk.
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| 10/3/14 |
Fall color is never as red as most descriptions say.
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| 10/26/14 |
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| 11/8/14 |
In 2015 this pretty little tree leafed out and bloomed beautifully . . . on one side only. The entire upper rear canopy did not produce a leaf or any buds, while the front and lower branches did.
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| Mid May 2015 |
All summer it looked bare and dead in back, but the wood was green and alive when scratched and there were leaf buds. The harsh winter had zapped a portion of it apparently, but did not kill the branches.
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| 6/19/15 |
Because of this it started to look really deformed. In 2015 I removed the dead portion, taking off fully half of this small tree in back. It's now canted forward and misshapen.
It is small leaved and a small stature, and it kind of gets lost against the greenery behind it. The wine red foliage of the nearby redbud steals the show. But the blackhaw viburnum is a nice little thing in its own right. The rounded shape was a little off with the bare branches in back.
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| 7/3/15 |
The tree on the west side of the house is completely different looking. It's taller, more open, more horizontally branched.
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| 6/26/15 |
Spring of 2017 was the first really good one for flowering -- so hard to get a photo, it just blends into the small leaved greenery behind, but blooming on both blackhaw viburnums was quite amazing.
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| 5/6/17 |
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| 5/10/17 |
