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Guides for pruning Banksias (aussie.zone)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've got a young silver banksia that is getting a bit unruly and I'm looking for a useful guide for understanding how they respond to pruning. Ideally want to understand what they respond well to and how I can train them to grow to suit my garden.

I basically want to encourage it to grow upwards more, so that it can rise above a fence to gain better access to light and provide screening from neighbours. Also hoping that as it grows it'll create room for a bit of an understory in the same location.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tough one to answer.

Is it new-ish or already fully established?

To get a shrubby tree to grow "up" is to remove a lot of lower branches as they form. Lollipopping it would look weird so you would need to choose a framework of branches and selectively prune them into the direction you need.

Do some image searching for guides like these: https://www.uky.edu/Ag/Horticulture/QRLabels/images/pruning%20cuts%203%20adapted%20from%20McNiel%20et%20al..jpg - if you took the 2 lower branches off the right side shrub, that would encourage some higher growth.

As for the practices, standard arboricutural techniques probably. Cutting at the branch collar with sharp secateurs (Felco are nice), pruning only 25% of total tree volume per year, pruning less needed branches (keep the ones the tree has put a lot of energy into), keeping the tree healthy during pruning events, don't prune when health is low or conditions are terrible, prune when actively growing (deciduous are pruned before bud burst in Winter) etc.

Barely helpful but 8 hours requires some sort of response. Good luck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Thanks for your response - it's fairly new (planted about a year and a half ago years ago as a 1m high tree from the nursery) and has really taken off over the last Summer. It's quite a tangle at the moment and needs some neatening up.

It sounds like I'm over thinking things a bit - I know that different plants respond differently to pruning but it sounds like trees are broadly similar even if they do have some variations.

From your response, it sounds like I should probably wait a little until I'm confident that there won't be any more strings of 30°+ days to avoid stressing it out - it should recover better once conditions are a bit more mild.