Carpinus betulus #1

January 2005

In the beginning of 2005, I acquired this young European hornbeam from a local garden nursery. I guess it to be between 4 and 5 years old at the time.

A few weeks later, the trunk was cut after the third branch, while the second one was reduced, and the first branch was removed. In retrospect this was a mistake, the trunk should have been cut between the first and the second branch, and the first branch would have provided a natural continuity of the trunk with good tapering.

March 2005

In spring the tree was then planted into the ground over a tile with some pozzolan added to the soil.

May 2006

The third branch got really big after a year of growth in the ground but it was starting horizontally and gave the trunk a bad shape so the trunk was reduced again at the level of the second branch.

February 2010

Unfortunately I can't find pictures of the previous years but the tree was left to grow freely with just one cut at about twice the height of the previous cut.

In that time the diameter of the trunk had arrived at what I wanted so I transplanted it into a container at the end of February 2010.

In retrospect I can identify two mistakes here: first the second cut should have been worked on to look natural, 10 years later it's still basically the same. And then it'd have been better to select a branch from the top to provide the continuity of the trunk instead of this one at the bottom. But I think there were no other available candidates at that time.

October 2011

In the previous years I was studying at a university just a couple of hours away from the garden of my parents where my trees were growing but I moved to the capital of the country for work in 2011 and moved again to the other side of the world a few years later.

March 2017

During that time this tree got a bit forgotten in the garden, with an occasional hedge cut when it got noticed for getting too big. It received some water but no feeding.

July 2020

After a couple of year I came back to this side of the world, then after another few years my life stabilized enough to move the trees that managed to stay alive during that period into my own garden.

This one managed pretty well, especially this year after an emergency transplantation into a new container. It will now receive regular feedings and lots of water during the growing season, then a structural pruning in winter, and be repotted in spring.

November 2020