How to Prune a Japanese Maple

[GRobi244]

Hi Dave, I love watching your videos. You are the greatest. I live in the southwest and I am planning on planting a "viridis" but I am not sure how to plant it. Thanks for your advice. Happy Holidays!!!

[tugboat0970]

dave,

i appreciate how you handle the responses to all they negative comments. No matter what opinion anyone has on how to prune this tree, you have done what the customer has asked for. If they are happy with it, you have done it right.

[growingwisdom]

Thanks for all the comments on this video. Its interesting how people have an opinion about pruning isn't it? As I like to say, what is really natural anyway? If it lives and you love it, go for it!

[sweeneysister]

Respectfully, there is nothing natural about Bonsai. You've taken a non native species and shown viewers it's okay to remove loads of the canopy in one season? In late summer? Japanese maples are extremely susceptible to death and disease after a heavy pruning. Viewers-sure he sounds like he knows what he's saying but please go easy on your Japanese maples.

[catninja1986]

Can I have your cuttings!? :) I've always wanted a J.Map. but they are wallet busters lol.

[urkingod]

I am proud Japanese! Do you love me?

[quercetum153]

Thanks for the videio. I enjoyed watching how others prune. I think this particular dissectum does not have a trunk worth showing. It is basically a stubby pole. It should have been pruned as it grew to have contours (I realize you are pruning according to client's wishes but your title is how to prune a Japanese maple.) I thought you could have thinned out the middle more to show the trunk instead of all at the bottom. The tree looks like it's wearing a skirt now with one leg missing.

[drum4tacos]

i agree, i have a dissectum crimson queen with about the same size trunk as this viridis, but i have been pruning as it grew, the trunk looks really cool. also, i opened up some of the top branches so it really kind of looks like a bonsai. unfortunately, this specimen was most likely trained with a straight trunk at the nursery, so there is nothing that could have been done to give the trunk more character.

maybe you could do a video on partial defoliation to allow light inside the canopy.

[growingwisdom]

Thanks for the comment. I have been caring for this tree for over 5 years and actually I cut off one-two years growth. The client loves the look and is pleased with what I do. Sometimes, we have to realize that the look we might think is the 'right' way is not what a client prefers. Putting certain colors together, pruning in a certain manner are not necessarily wrong, they are just not what some experts teach. I greatly appreciated everyone's comments.

[joshallen1984]

You just cut off 5+ years of growth. Yes it needed thinning and a little prunning but you butchered this plant son.

[ethantrimmer12]

but this is necessary because the japanese believed in simplicity, and almost to give a bonsai look to it

[growingwisdom]

Thanks for the comment. I am always intersted in the opinions of other plant enthusiasts. For this client, exposing the trunk was something they wanted and I agree it looks great. I feel the artistic beauty of the tree is that it weeps, yet the trunk is now exposed. Over the next year the tree will rapidly regrow its leaders and some of the trunk will again be hidden. The value, in my opinion, is what whoever is growing the tree loves, not what they are told they are suppose to love.

[spathfinder34089]

I agree with what you did to make the client happy. The client pays the bills. I have been pruning for over 30 years, including Japanese pruning in Japanese gardens. Showing off the trunk is what Brings out the character of the tree. Even though it may not look great right now, it will in the long term. An Old Pruner told me years ago, always prune 3 years out, or for what the tree will be in the future. Good advice

[Cedrusdeodara]

Nice video, thanks. As a member of the Maple Society and a grower and collector of Japanese Maples, I have to tell you that limbing up a dissectum like you did in this video can destroy the beauty and value of a cutleaf maple. The real beauty of a laceleaf/weeping Japanese Maple is to allow it to naturally contort and weep and to develop a broad canopy of leaves. Allowing it to naturally develop gives the tree year round beauty with its contorted branches exposed during winter months.

[PCO636]

I have to toally agree with you Ced, as an owner of many bonsai maples they should look as natural as possible and not look as though it is standing to attention or a one legged emu. The client obviously does not understand how a maple should look, but if they are paying for the pruning, who is the pruner to argue, a lot of maples I see in modern gardens seem to all have a straight trunk and an apex canopy that looks like it has been done with a spirit level, totally unatural to me.

[robfaeedi]

Thanks for that, I've got a maple that looks similar to yours, except its Red and has got lots of dead, bare branches underneath. have always just left them for fear of killing the tree, now I know what to do, I can sort it.

Thanks again