I once visited a large public garden, I think it was in the DFW area, but it could have been in Oregon. Anyway among other wonderful things there was a beautiful Japanese garden where everything was neatly trimmed and shaped. Right next to it was an area with the same plants, but they had been left to grow in their natural shapes. It was hard to say which was the most beautiful as each had their special charm.

I like the natural graceful shapes of branches to be left alone, but it seems there are styles of gardening for everybody.

Happy gardening!

odd...

because not only has there been a lot of info disbursed about the foolishness of it, but you'd think a difficult economy would make the owners of commercial properties become more conservative about the amount of money they shell out to butchers to ruin their landscape trees...

I am so proud that I did not strangle her.

I used to go by that house & smile to see my plants doing well.

Even after the roses (grafted no doubt) disappeared, I smiled at the crepes.

until last year, when someone cut them down to 4'high *trunks*.

don't plan on going by there again, can't bear to see the destruction.

& they were carefree, flowering *trees*, freebie for the homeowner, *assets* to the property.

hope he needs to sell & those stubs cost him a chunk of equity.

Pam

If your crepes aren't blooming well, you might check to be sure the tree isn't buried too deeply in the ground.

Even if it was planted at the right depth initially (with the root flare exposed), the addition of mulch & compost sometimes raises the level of the soil, putting the tree under stress.

Pam

Espaliered & pollarded trees make me flinch;
topiary & bonsai not only look funny to me, they make me wonder why someone spent all that time doing it;
I never saw an Indian hawthorne made into a tree standard, but I don't like the looks of tree roses (long skinny legs with a mop on the top);
& a plant growing "upside down" looks odd but doesn't bother me.

In a similar vein, it seems to me that roses don't want to be blue, daylilies don't want to be pink, & animals don't want to be white.

I like red roses, orange daylilies, tabby cats, golden tigers, & wolf-colored dogs.

They're beautiful the way nature made them, & the ones that have been made into something else for the amusement of human beings are usually much less healthy & much less robust.

I do recognize that some genetic manipulation arose out of need (herding dogs, for instance), but living things deserve admiration for their beauty just the way they are.

To each his own, I suppose, but I cringe when they are topped and wonder why they didn't just plant a shorter plant that blooms instead.

One summer day when I was at the vet clinic, I realized the tech & the receptionist were sort of...
looking at me.

Finally the receptionist said,
"Sylvia, do you have a lot of bird feeders out?"

"Nah, just one, a nice big one."

"uh. well. There's bird doodie in your hair."

It was white crepe myrtle blossoms that had shaken off the tree when I walked by!

RICKY THOMPSON-
Too many gardeners in east Texas perform "Crepe Murder," which is cutting crepe myrtles back to main trunks every fall. This causes the plant to have fewer blossoms in the spring, makes a strange looking if not downright ugly plant, and causes spindly new growth each spring. Like other trees, crepe myrtles should be pruned only by selectively cutting out whole branches to maintain the shape of the plant. If a plant is too big for the space, take it up and plant a more appropriate size.

As for trees, no tree should be "topped," which is cutting back major limbs. Trees don't recover from this radical procedure and they never bush back out attractively. As with crepe myrtles, trees should be pruned by selectively cutting out limbs back to a major node. Trees should only be pruned to maintain shape (not size), to remove dead or diseased wood, or to keep limbs from contacting structures.

LINDA C ASKEY - Southern Gardens

ALIBIS FOR CREPE MURDER
My neighbors pruned theirs.
Improper pruning is a copycat crime. Each tree has a different form, and its role varies from one landscape to the next. Therefore, you need to figure out why you are pruning before you cut a branch.
It's getting too big.
If your tree is too tall, then you have the wrong one. Pruning to reduce its height will only create a maintenance battle that you will never win.

Fortunately, even large crepe myrtles can be transplanted with success. Replace yours with a different kind of plant or a shorter selection of crepe myrtle. Acoma, Catawba, Cherokee, Comanche, Hopi, and Sioux are a few of the semidwarf forms that reach 8 to 14 feet in height in about 10 years. If you want a shrub, try Centennial, Victor, Prairie Lace, or Hope; these grow 3 to 4 feet tall. Natchez, Muskogee, Fantasy, Dallas Red, Byers Wonderful White, Watermelon Red, and Biloxi all grow at least 20 feet, so plant them where their height will be an asset.

If I don't prune my tree, it won't bloom.
Pruning will not inspire flowering; it will just bring the flowers down to where you can see them. Often, trees that fail to bloom are growing under too much shade, so move them to the sun.

It looks scraggly.
Crepe myrtles naturally send up new shoots called suckers from their base. While multitrunk trees are handsome, too many trunks can appear unkempt. Use hand clippers to cut off all unwanted suckers at the surface of the soil. Now is a good time.

I'm just shaping it up.
Don't cut to see over them, cut to see through them. Remove limbs from the inside of the tree, especially limbs that cross or hang so low that they hit you in the face. Remove entire limbs flush with the trunk as shown in Order in the Cut box. If you leave a stub, four or five new shoots will grow in place of the one you removed.

MAKING REPARATIONS
If your tree has been damaged by improper pruning, you can restore it. Cuts on young limbs (2 inches or less in diameter) can be repaired as shown in Reform School box. But larger limbs that have been lopped off or repeatedly pruned so that they have developed a knuckle need to be removed entirely. Trees that have been cut back to trunks 4 or 5 inches in diameter will never look natural again. These need to be cut flush to the ground so new trunks can be trained to replace the old.

CLEMSON EXTENSION:
The practice of chopping off the tops of crape myrtle has become very commonplace. Many people believe that it is required to promote flowering; some prune because the plant is too large for the space provided; others see their neighbors doing it and feel the need to follow suit. There are some instances in which heavy pruning is necessary, but light pruning is usually all that is needed.

ELLEN BROWN:

The number one most common reason Crepe Myrtles fail to bloom is improper pruning techniques (or a lack of pruning altogether). Crepe Myrtles bloom on the current season's growth. If they are pruned too late, all the new wood is removed and the flower buds never develop. Pruning should be done only after the tree flowers. You said your tree is very large so it may be older. Declining Crepe Myrtles can be revived by pruning. In the dormant season, some of the extraneous branches are cleaned up and removed, opening the interior of the plant to more sunlight and air circulation. Be careful not to commit "crepe murder." Just cut the branches to enhance the natural, overall appearance of the tree, don't whack them all back to one height.

Each Saturday morning after football season ends, legions of bored men armed with saws and loppers emerge from their garages to commit "crepe murder." They needlessly reduce majestic crepe myrtles to ugly stumps-in many cases, ruining them forever.

STEVE BENDER - Southern Living
STOP DON'T CHOP
In South Carolina, the Spartanburg Men's Garden Club is working to end the slaughter. Last year, one of its members, Henry Pittman, sent me a copy of the club's excellent brochure, "Crape Myrtles: Four Seasons of Beauty" (yes, I know-they spell it with an "a"). It covers all aspects of selecting, growing, and pruning crepe myrtles. We thought so highly of its advice that we visited Spartanburg to see firsthand what they were talking about so we could tell you.

The objectives of pruning a crepe myrtle are to maintain its natural sculptural form, produce strong branches that hold flowers upright, and open up its center to reveal the smooth, multitoned bark that forms on mature trunks and branches.

Cutting it back to thick stubs each year makes these goals impossible. A graceful tree quickly becomes a fencepost or hat rack. Pretty bark never appears. Each beheaded trunk grows a Medusa-like tangle of spindly whips too weak to hold up flowers.

Decatur's annual spring sacrifice: improper crepe myrtle pruning
03/08/2006
Decatur Daily, The
Martin Berket
Return to Top
**Jeff Sibley, Alumni associate professor of horticulture at AU, is a key source for this story.**

Hoyt Williamson works at Limestone Correctional Facility, but the shocking truth is he sees more murderers running free in Decatur.

That's right.

Perfectly respectable, upstanding members of the community, maybe your neighbor, committing murder.

Crepe murder, that is.

The carnage is especially tragic in a city that has had aspirations of being "the crepe myrtle capital of the world." Late educator Frank Philpot envisioned the whole city splashed in crepe color all summer, and the annual fall sale he organized for some 15 years put more than 100,000 plants into the community.

Crepe murder is a tongue-in-cheek term among horticulturists and savvy gardeners for the severe annual decapitation of crepe myrtles perpetrated in late winter by more than a few innocent home gardeners and landscapers.

The result not only robs these tall bushes of their graceful form but also stimulates the growth of suckers, which can cause crowding and pest problems near the resulting stumps.

"It's a really knurly kind of affect," said Williamson, who teaches horticulture at the prison for Calhoun Community College. "People commonly do it because it's easy to do. What typically happens is some varieties are so vigorous, you'll wind up with blooms so heavy and stems real long that don't have a lot of support at the crotch angle off the main trunk and they wind up breaking off."

A better practice, Williamson said, is to have a range of about three feet within which you keep your crepe myrtles. If you want a 6-foot shrub, cut it to 3 feet the first year, then at 4 feet the next year, then 5 feet the next and then back to 3 feet the following year, and following the same pattern, he said.

"By cutting back at various places, you end up invigorating the tree and giving it more strength," Williamson said. "What we find is if we don't do some pruning on them, you tend to get to the point where you get a very weak, spindly plant and a small amount of new growth that translates into not nearly as many blooms. By pruning to maintain size, we actually will improve the blooming of them."

An even better way to control height, said Jeff Sibley, alumni professor at Auburn University, is to pick a variety that grows at the height you want.

There are hundreds of varieties, he said. Varieties such as Natchez, Muskogee, Fantasy, Dallas Red, Byers, Wonderful White, Watermelon Red and Biloxie grow at least 20 feet, growers say. Acoma, Catawba, Cherokee, Comanche, Hopi and Sioux reach 8 to 14 feet. Centennial, Victor, Prairie Lace or Hope grow to 3 or 4 feet.

Whacking a 20- to 30-foot tree back to 3-foot trunks ignores some of the plant's most appealing aspects, such as shape and peeling bark, Sibley said. For a municipality, hard pruning may be necessary for safety reasons along a right of way. But it also can lead to weak limbs and health problems that cut short the plant's life.

Crepe myrtles bloom on new wood, Sibley said. By pruning limbs no smaller than a pencil, the plant stays healthy and still puts out shoots that produce lots of blooms.

To trim into a tree form, horticulturists advise, remove limbs from inside the tree that cross or hang so low they hit you in the face. Remove the entire limb flush with the trunk. If you leave a stub, new shoots will grow.

++++++++++++

And on and on....

Sawing off the tops of the trees results in death from fungal infection eventually--at least it always does in Houston.

Sad thing is, a tree can have numerous smart owners and trimmers for decades, and all it takes is one helpful neighbor, new idiot owner, or yard crew with a saw, and the tree is ruined forever.

I don't profess to be an expert on Crepes, but here's what I'd do:

1-Fire your landscaper and find a more knowledgeable one.

2-Cut the stubs back to the ground and start over.

Someone stop me if I'm wrong, but once crepe murder is committed, they won't go back to their natural form. If you cut the stubs to the ground, new suckers will come up and you get to start from scratch.

I can't say how long it will take for them to regain their former size, probably 4-5 years I'd guess?

I have a few...of course. I used to thin out the branches that were narrower than a pencil, last year I didn't get around to it, and this year I forgot. But, the trees look like trees with several main branches. I find the trunks on myrtles to be so elegant in the winter that I actually like when a branch crosses another and unites. Only have one that will do that, but looking forward to it.

c

terry

I went to a talk at the home show this weekend with a tree expert. He was showing slides from China and their levees (to protect from typhoons) and there were a lot of crape myrtles planted. Everyone had been murdered. So it's a world-wide thing.
Tally HO!!