[Arid_gardener] WAXED BOXWEED TREE

[Olin Miller]

It would help if you could provide the botanical Latin name for the plant.
I was unsuccessful in finding any reference to either a "WAXED BOXWEED TREE"
or a "Waxed Boxwood Tree " in either books on with Google or yahoo searches.

Just guessing - I suspect you have a Japanese Boxwood, buxus microphylla
japonica, which is a shrub that grows up to about 6 feet at maturity if not
pruned.  It can be trained as a small single trunk shrub but is often also
grown in multiple trunks.  It takes pruning very well and is often used in
hedges.  In containers it is sometimes shaped into tiers, or a pyramid, or
ball.  We rarely see any of the other boxwoods here in the low desert.  If
that is what you have it should be easy to determine if it is rootbound and
to trim off any protruding or encircling roots, then repot it.  As far as
pruning to reshape it, you might want to do it stages so as not to remove
too much foliage at one time - consider 1/3 or less of the foliage at each
pruning.

Olin
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Walker Public" <walkerpublic at cableone.net>
To: "County Extension Office" <arid_gardener at Ag.arizona.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 6:45 AM
Subject: [Arid_gardener] WAXED BOXWEED TREE
We live in the Ponderosa Forest in Prescott.  About seven years ago, we
planted a Waxed Boxwood Tree in a pot on our patio.  The tree trunk was
probably an inch in diameter and the canopy was shaped in a ball and
probably two feet across.  We planted in a plastic pot about two feet across
and two feet high.
Now the tree has gotten way out of hand.  The canopy is about five feet
across and the trunk is probably 2-3 inches in diameter.  I would like to
shape the canopy back to a two feet ball.  I assume that it is also root
bound.  Can I take the tree out of the pot, trim the roots and reshape the
canopy and get another seven years out of the tree?
We love the tree and would hate to lose it.  We have no where else to plant
it and we could not handle a larger pot.