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Stephen Padley Landscapers for your garden design
  
   



Stephen Padley Landscapers for your garden design  
 
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Stephen Padley Landscapers
Features - Training and Shaping

TRAINING

There is nothing more impressive than an individual plant grown and trained as a standard or half standard, used as a “dot” plant for a central focal point or as a single specimen plant grown in a pot container to furnish patios or terraces. These plants can be expensive to buy, but are easily achievable with a little time and patience.


Firstly, there are three starting point options (seed, cuttings, buying rooted cuttings). Propagation and cutting will be dealt with at a later time.
For the quickest start, purchase a rooted single stemmed plant, or if more than one shoot, reduce to a single stem. Insert one bamboo cane 30cm higher than your desired finished height of the plant, a good finished height is 60 cm , 90 cm or 120 cm high is the norm.

At this stage you must not remove the growing tip of the plant as this will induce bushy growth. Tie the stem carefully to the bamboo cane at 8 – 10 cm intervals to achieve a perpendicular stem, remove all the side shoots that develop on the stem BUT not the leaves, these leaves will be removed at a later stage.

  




When the stem grows to your desired finished height pinch out the growing point of the plant. Very soon a batch of rigorous side shoots will shoot out from the top three of four uppermost leaf joints. All side shoots below these must be removed. The top remaining new side shoots will need the growing tips pinched out just above the second pair of leaves.

Very soon a second batch of side shoots will grow from this point, these will need the growing tips pinched out just above the third pair of leaves. Continue pinching out the growing tips from future side shoots until a good even round shape is attained, now is the time to remove the leaves that were left on the stem, starting from the base of the stem upwards towards the lowest shoots of the head, finally reduce the bamboo cane to the plant height.



Ten good plants which are very suitable to train as specimen standards or half standards – Dracanea, Hibiscus, Oleander, Fuchsia, Bougainvillea, Boxus, Thuja, Ficsus, Lantana, Laurus.

SHAPING

Growing a plant with a curved stem (i.e. a swan neck) is very eye catching and architectural. This can quite simply be achieved by laying down the plant for a growing season, covering the pot only with soil, and keeping the plant well fed and watered. The growing tip will bend and grow upwards towards the sky, once the plant has gown 30 cm, stand or plant the specimen upright. The growing tip will carry on growing towards the sky creating a “swan neck” stemmed plant.

The lower leaves need to be removed from the base of the plant to just above the tip of the curved stem. The normal life span of the lower leaves is about two years. The removal of the lower leaves creates a more woody stem and a taller plant quicker plus enhancing the architectural structure of the plant. The best plant for this process if the Dracaena (Yucca) family.
     
 
   
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