AusBonsai

When my wife and I moved into our current house, we planted a few native shrubs in the front yard to provide screening and attract some local wildlife. One species was the Olive Leaved Grevillia (G. olivacea), chosen as the label on the tubestock stated it would grow approx 2m high and wide. Fast forward 5 years later and it had grown well over 3m tall and was threatening to take over, despite the constant pruning. It was a lovely specimen, full of apricot flowers hiding close to the trunk and it never needed watering but it had to go due to it's size and vigour. I took an air layer before it was removed and luckily it rooted well after about 6 months. That was about 8 years ago and the layer has been happily growing in a training pot in a quiet corner of the backyard. As always I forgot to take any pictures of it in it's early stages but for the first 4 years I just let the shoots grow long to build up the thickness of the branches. A large section of the trunk died back and produced a nice shari, as did the main branch at the base, and the nebari has produced a nice flare at the base.

After the 4th year I started pruning to induce some ramification and reduce the leaf size. It backbuds really well but never on the trunk. The leaves are reducing and I hope to get them smaller still, but I have no experience with these so we'll see what happens. I feed with Sudden Impact for Roses (as with most of my trees) and occasional Seasol. I have only repotted it once about 3 years ago without any issues, I think it was in November. It's still pretty rough but if I can reduce the leaves a bit more I think it'll be ready for a proper pot.

Matt.

Hi Matt ,great looking trunk and nebari ,have to be happy with that result. Good luck with it. Cheers John.

I decided to provide an update on this tree and the first thing I notice is that I misspelled “Grevillea” in the title! Sigh.
In November 2023 I repotted it into a Luke Parsons pot and the tree sulked for a few months before growing strongly again. I decided it needed a taller apex and so grew that on while keeping the lower growth strong. Unlike some other natives it responded nicely without dropping any lower branches.
It’s getting close now to how I want the basic structure, so now I can focus on the finer branches. It now flowers every Winter/Spring and the added bonus is that the flowers are close to the trunk, so I don’t need the shoots to get long and ruin the outline to get some colour.

Matt S