bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - Newbie seeks Antartic Beech advice

Unlike beeches, this guy back buds, but still you wouldn’t want the internodes to grow that far apart…
I think that in Cheshire you should get away with much you can do to it.

As for your styling…
The gaps are not as bad as you may think… you do need some empty spaces.
But the amount of bareness that is occurring in areas closer to the trunk is not really doing any good… you may want some fresh foliage, or attempt to really thicken the tree.

But if you ask me what I would personally do, I think I would firstly try to decide if this is the height I want the tree to be in.

If it is; then it being a “beech” to nurse, I would jus let it grow a few years (especially lower branches while pruning only the above) to encourage a better taper. And then I would remove the big ones and see what the new growth has come up with.
Since it is not exactly like a common beech, it will take it’s time to thicken. Even specimens 20m tall tend to be pretty slender.

But if I was wishing to instantly dig in and get a style out off what I have here as is…
I think I would do something wild like chop it all down to the lowest branch because the trunk has a pretty dramatic curve with strong character until it hits the first branch… And see where it goes from there. (The cool thing about an Antarctic beech is that its leaves are not as large and would manage with smaller sizes)
Or I would chop it down until the second branch as that too would compliment the curvature.

I have attached too sample images with a faint image of the original photo to give you an idea of what I mean.

Hope this was of some use;

Black

(Try to note how the healing has worked on the area you have already cut... you may need a knob cutter or a simiallar tool to carve out as well)