Hornbeam "Vincents Forest"

 

A few moments from repotting in spring:

Carpinus betulus "Vincent's forest" in autumn colors

 

Carpinus betulus "Vincent's forest" in autumn colors

Carpinus betulus "Vincent's forest"

Carpinus betulus "Vincent's forest"

Forrest was repotted in spring, some old soil removed. Few roots worked on. I tried to plat it deeper but not much could have been done. Couldn't push it too far since a lot of roots were removed. Soil mix adapted with much more pumice since it is lighter than my preferred zeolite.

Now growing strongly, trimmed back ľ times already. The main tree still needs a lot of improvement in the top of the crown paradoxically.  

Carpinus betulus "Vincent's forest" in autumn colors

I took some time and removed already dry leaves. Took few pictures to catch autumn appearance. 

You can imagine this is heavy as hell and hard to carry. So I avoid carrying it to my usual photo places. I liked october colors so I took couple of crappy pictures on bench, which is suboptimal at best but enough to document the process.  

October 12th

October 12th

Carpinus betulus "VINCENT'S FOREST" edit

I made couple of necessary edits to the group recently. In current stage of the season you see very little to nothing what was done, so pictures are just for illustration. 

I have done some edits in April as you can find in previous post here. Now I went bit further with some of them. 

Now, main goal is to clearly define crowns of two main trees of the composition. For that purpose some important branches were positioned into better positions to achieve that target in long run.

Branches in red areas were moved with guy wires into directions of the arrows. For the future two blue areas on top will have to be bigger and create larger area of negative space there. Big blue area on bottom right was established in April and must be clear for the future.  In yellow area is one branch which is bit problematic and could be removed or drastically redesigned in spring.

For those of you who are not clicking link to the previous post, here is the spring picture of the group after editing in April. 

Chainsaw in "Vincent's forest"

It was time to do decent edit of the hornbeam forest. Firstly, regular pruning of the branches, more on top less on the bottom. 

Secondly, there have been some design challenges on the group. If you look on "before picture, or search any of the previous posts about this group, you'll notice there is problem on right side, at the bottom of the largest tree. When group is covered with foliage, almost entire trunk of main tree is hidden in it. 

I was thinking a loooong time what to do with it. I came to conclusion last year. Now was time to do the edit. 

Basically I do not want any low growing foliage on the right side of the main tree. Couple of too low branches on other smaller trees were cut off. Trunk of the closest small tree next to the min tree was pulled to the left. Small curved tree on the bottom of the min tree was cut out. And lastly leggy top pointing towards the front on the main tree was cut off as well. 

Now you can see the result. Last pictures are rather rubbish since it was too dark. Better pictures will be taken and posted during the weekend. 

Any feedback is appreciated. 

before

After

"Vincent's forest"

I did couple of of pictures of the hornbeam forest few days ago. Colors were nice and bit unusual for me. I was in hurry since I thought it will turn brown and dry soon. But it surprised me and it created even nicer yellow tones in last days. I thought they are so nice that I moved it  to my usual photo place and took few shots. You can see the result. 

My hornbeams tend to have ugly brownish and dry leaves rather than nice autumn yellow like this one. I have about 10 hornbeams but none of them is even close to those colors. 

"Vincent's forest" in autumn colors

It was about right time for some autumn colors in my garden. Some trees seems not noticed its autumn already. But this forest started to get yellow leaves, more inside the crown and in shaded side. Picture taken on shelf instead of my traditional photo area since I was not in mood for moving this beast around this time. In my last post about this group or forest I was making repotting. As you can see trees are doing fine. Wiring in winter is possible again.