Taxus Baccata long term project (urban yamadori)

Like every spring I helped grandpa Janez yesterday with the spring work in his garden. But this spring was different than all the other years, this spring was very special. Grandpa Janez agreed that I can start to work on his huge Yew (Taxus Baccata) which is in his garden for who knows how many years. So I started on the preparation for collection.

First I chose the basic line of the future trunk and prepared an operational working plan. After that I started to remove the unnecessary branches. The large bush slowly started to show with each new cut a completely new image. A very nice and promising picture. While discovering the tree I found two nice branches which have a nice potential for individual trees and decided to leave them on the main tree for air layering. So at the end if everything goes by plan there will be three trees, one great tree and two quite nice medium size trees.

Yew (Taxus Baccata) - My new project

Massive nebari

Yew (Taxus Baccata) after the first preparation step

One of the branches for air layering

The future plan for now is as follows. First I will encourage new buds that will form the basis for the development of new branches. After that I will prepare the tree for collection and planting in its first container. Parallel to that I will air layer the two good branches. Then we'll see further. 

The story and my vision for this tree started to mature in my heed about two years ago in the stage of hope that grandpa Janez will give his "YES" for collecting this tree. The “Yes” happened and yesterday I could make the first step towards the realization of this vision.

This will be definitely a long term project and I can’t wait to see the result.