Niwaki – or cloud pruning isn’t something I have really done before, but a boxwood greatly in need of pruning gave me the opportunity to try. It’s an easy four step process, though it did require some awkward angles and positions for me! Watch this video to learn how.
well today i’m going to do something that a number of you have requested on multiple occasions and it’s it’s not the exact thing but let’s say it’s kind of pretend a pretend version of it and that’s cloud pruning or niwaki n-i-w-a-k-i i probably just butchered that my japanese isn’t the best if you know how to pronounce it please let me know and any of you who do any form of cloud pruning or bonsai in your gardens please comment below i would love to know that because i’m really becoming more and more fascinated with bonsai and i’d like to learn more about it so definitely please comment below so i can learn from you i’m standing in the shade as long as possible because it’s very hot today and i’m going to tackle a boxwood that used to be a sphere and over time it has lost its form so this is going to be in kind of four distinct steps so the first step is to assess your specimen so let’s talk about that so i’ll come out from underneath the comfort of my shade so this is the boxwood i’m going to tackle as i said it used to be a spherical form so in terms of assessing the specimen i’m going to kind of look at this entire area as the specimen and what i’m going to do first is just examine what all besides just the boxwood itself that i might want to prune back so this is a goji berry and i really think it doesn’t look too great in there so i’m going to take that out and i’ve got some dead wood on this katone ester so i’m going to get that out of the way because i want this entire area as i always do to have more definition and look less cluttered so that would include removing any weeds uh removing any little volunteers of trees removing the ubiquitous oh this stuff virginia creeper that’s just everywhere that was my that was another one of my most frustrating things um so at any rate i’m going to look at the entire area to see what all i want to remove to make it look cleaner have more definition and look less cluttered which is the next step in this process after i assess the area and i assess the specimen for what i want to do then i’m going to start decluttering and if you guys know me you know that this is one of my favorite things to do is to prune up things so that they just look nicer there is more airflow there is more definition and yes there is more negative space so i’m just going to look at this boxwood and decide what i want to do so if part one is to assess the specimen what i’m going to do is look for the major trunks in this boxwood and stuart can you see that can you show them that you can see there’s some virginia creeper growing in there let me remove this so you can see there’s all sorts of splaying that’s taken place as it’s opened up as it’s fallen over a lot of this was actually from the ice and the snowfall heavy snowfall that we had this winter so that’s one of the reasons it has so splayed so this is the perfect example of the next cut i’m going to do and the next step and that is decluttering and so i’m going to come in here and i’m not going to be extremely mindful of these cuts right now you guys i’m going to probably need my bigger pruners for some of these i’ve got them all over there sitting on the chair but i’m going to come in here and initially i’m just going to remove some of this twigginess so i can see what i am working with you can see that kind of helped already so i’m looking at the size and the width and the diameter of the trunks that remain let me get this virginia creeper out of here so you can see and some of this obviously i’m going to do from the back side stuart just pointed out to me that i’ve got my pruners here i had forgotten thank you stuart and by the way you guys kudos to stewart who shot his best round of golf ever yesterday so he is in a very good mood nothing like a good golf round to put a guy in a good mood am i right stuart yes so now i’m going to continue with this decluttering and i’m going to start with some of the thinner branches and i i’m looking at this and i’m thinking do i really want any of them that lie down or do i only want the ones that are growing vertically and for the most part i’m thinking i just want the ones growing vertically so that tells me that some of this stuff i’m going to take off and this is you guys this is a perfect example of a gardening risk worth taking because i don’t really know what i’m doing all i know is that this does not look good and i can’t really make it any worse than it is and so i’m going to tackle it now i’m going to stop here if i can get out of this spot i’m going to stop here because if i trim too much more you’re not going to get the effect of the before and after so we’re going to stop here so that stuart can take a still and we’re going to kind of call this the before so i’m going to continually clean this out and definitely this is something i should have done in the cool of the morning and not right now in the heat of the day but i’m not always smart about that and i don’t i you know when you live in the south and it gets so hot we try to live the entirety of our lives in the morning and do everything in the morning you know we want to run our errands we want to water we want to do absolutely everything in the morning when it’s still cool and at a certain point you run out of morning do you not stuart okay i am going to take a cut right here you can see how it’s slowly starting to reveal some branching okay and stuart is now the director um does it stay or does it go and you know what i don’t like the way these come down low so i’m going to take them off and at this point it’s probably this is actually what the third stage is and that is really starting to prune what you identified as that which you wanted to remove when you did your initial assessment oh that was a very informative cut wasn’t it now whenever possible i’m going to do like i do when i limb something up and that’s just take it back to the trunk look at all this messiness under here you guys again this is something that would be great to do if you were really mad at your spouse or your kids or your photographer i’ve got to get my apron here situated because i have i’m a hard worker aren’t i stuart okay i’m gonna get back in here i don’t think i’ve got any plumber’s crack showing do i stewart that would be good okay now here’s another example this is just really wonderful camera work on stewart’s part see how this branch is bending down and this one is bending down i’m going to remove both of those and see how that immediately opened up a bunch of this space and revealed the architecture of those branches in here it’s going to be the same and i can start taking these all the way back to the trunk do you have to be kind of a contortionist to do this uh yeah you kind of do and if this is something that would hurt your back to work in such a tight location then by all means don’t do it know your limitations and let someone else do it for you i can’t decide if i want that to stay or go i just keep cutting and removing stuff now it seems obvious that this should go but okay this is going to be really awkward you guys but i’m going to sit down in this spot don’t look at my dress stuart okay don’t ever let anyone say linda water does not do her own gardening in that right steward okay some of these i’m gonna need more powerful pruners to get to them so i will maybe do that when you guys are not around okay i am definitely going to take this one off and while i’m doing it while i’m down here take the opportunity to remove anything else in here you don’t want so i’ve got some aggressive variety that has come up in here and because we had a rain last night it’s not only humid but it’s also an opportunity to remove some of that stuff and i know you’re going to ask me do i never wear gloves and sometimes i do and sometimes i don’t today i’m not partly because i’m getting ready to go get a manicure and a pedicure as a reward for doing this okay i think you guys get the idea and i’m gonna finish doing this you guys don’t have to stay out here in the heat and humidity with me while i do this but i’m going to finish up i do think you’ve got the idea i’m going to remove the rest of some of this branching down here and some of this other stuff that i don’t like and that i want removed some of it i may have to get from the other side and i’m going to remove this stuff and then i’m going to show you what it looks like at this stage and then i’ll show you what i’m going to do to the top so we will be back well first of all here’s i have finished doing it but i want to make this caveat don’t do this at high noon like i just did it is really hot as the dickens and and i don’t know what i was thinking i was the one who scheduled this today and i just wasn’t thinking clearly i think i believed the weather report which said it was going to be a little bit cloudier than it actually is so my bad so first of all i would say if you’re going to do this don’t do it when it’s so hot at midday and if if at all you begin to feel lightheaded woozy just stop go in hydrate preferably hydrate beforehand if you need to go in and put in put on more sunscreen do that today is one of those days where i think i wish i had one of my shirts with a pop-up collar because i forgot to put sunscreen on the back of my neck and i put it everywhere else but not back here and it’s because i usually have on a collar so those are things to take into consideration okay so we do the first two steps one was we stood excuse me we stood back and we assessed the specimen the second thing we did was we went in and we really decluttered and stuart if you would pan over there now into the sun i’m in the shade you can see how much stuff i removed and how much it opened up underneath the foliage of that boxwood the other thing it did was expose things behind there that i didn’t know were there because there was so much uh so much cluttering clutter from the boxwood so i was able to remove some privet behind there that was really going to be problematic i was able to really address a number of other issues that were back there and i’ve got i’ve got more to address but now i not only decongested the interior of this to do our cloud printing but i also created pathways where i can navigate now when you do things like this and you’re already down there or out there this is a perfect time for something that i call accidental gardening you’ve already got your pruners you’re in that same place you’re already making stewart if you wouldn’t mind showing my huge debris pile and you see that it isn’t just boxwood yeah there’s lots of boxwood in here but i also removed some of the lower growing wood julia here is that privet some of the privet that i discovered back there and i will i will aggressively clean up all of this i also removed some of the dead interior on this standard topiary blue star juniper i’ve got a little bit more work to do but you’ll notice how i even opened up the foliage on that a little bit so you get hints of what’s beyond it just makes the whole area look less congested larger and definitely i’ve got better air circulation in here right now so the next step after i have done standing back and assessing the specimen and going in and decluttering the next thing if i was going to truly bonsai this is that i would look to identify the clouds so it would be kind of obvious that each branch would kind of become a cloud so now i’ve got this main trunk right here this could become a cloud and this could become a cloud and these two could become their own separate clouds i’ve still got a little bit of pruning here on the backside they could be their own separate clouds and at that point what i would do was just identify each one of these and turn it prune it so that each one was kind of a globular or round shape i don’t think i want anything that architectural or formal back in here so for me this is what i was saying this is kind of like fake cloud pruning i’m i’m just going to soften up the top a little bit and i’m going to prune back some of these outliers and you’ll notice that i’m not really being real careful about pruning in between the buds or anything like that so i’m i’m kind of considering this to be a soft cloud prune stuart if you don’t mind i would like you to show everyone the back side of this blue star juniper because look was this would also be a candidate if you wanted to bonsai something or cloud prune something it’s actually not there stuart i’m sorry if you’ll come back all the way around here to where i’m standing thank you for your indulgence but look how beautifully that opened up this blue star juniper and you can see i wouldn’t have even known that this opportunity was back here but how gorgeous is that so if i really wanted to create a japanese effect i could definitely do that and make a beautiful specimen planting out of this because you expose you clip back one thing and it exposes the beauty of another thing and that’s what i love and you know what else i love you guys i did all of this and i did not spend a dime you okay stuart stewart just about wiped out on the debris pile he is such a good sport fortunately stuart is also an exceptional tennis player and so that’s one that’s one of the reasons he is able to just kind of work around all of these tight spaces so nimbly okay now some of you i know will do this and you will say oh i wish i could show you what i did after you showed me is there a way that i could post pictures i get this question a lot so here’s i guess my my not necessarily a sales pitch but if you want to be able to show me your pictures then um you can become a member of my youtube channel so there’s two different levels there’s a 299 level and there’s a 499 level at the 299 level you’ll have access to the community tab which is at the very top of my my youtube page and that’s where i’m going to show lots of stills of how this looks when it’s not in the glare of day and after i’ve really cleaned it up and styled this space this corner so that would be at the 299 level i think it’s stuart is at that 499 level that you have access to my special facebook page lv insider that makes you an lv insider and you have access to my facebook page and that is where you guys can post all of your pictures a lot of you have sent me images of how you’ve styled your qvc products that’s where you can post all of those people get ideas it’s a wonderful giving generous community of people so if you want to join that community that’s a place where you can show me your pictures so i’m not going to do too much more to this because as i said i don’t want a real tight cloud form i want a loose cloud form and so i’m going to kind of leave it at this here’s some more that privet this is what i’m saying accidental gardening you’re already here you’ve already got your pruners and you didn’t really intend on doing this but suddenly you have a wad like this that just happened kind of accidentally because you had your pruners in your hand and it gives you such a sense of gratification and immediate gratification no less so that is kind of my wonky explanation of cloud pruning um the last step would be after identified my mounds i would probably come back in here and again i’m not going to do this but if you want a real tight cloud prune effect then i would come back in with long handled clippers and i would really pretty tightly and cleanly define each one of these clouds stuart can you see what i mean about different clouds in here so this would be a cloud this would be a cloud this would be a cloud i’d probably remove those interior branches if i wanted it to look that way but this one i just wanted it to be kind of a loose cloud form that would be a what would that be a cumulus cloud versus nimbo cumulus or stratus somebody who’s a scientist out there can tell us so that’s kind of how i did it that’s how you can do it too and all free of charge nothing but a lot of sweat um and again don’t do it at high noon so there you go that is how you cloud prune a boxwood well here is my fashion epilogue for today my sunglasses are actually bifocal sunglasses and i think they were is there a brand called people i got these years and years ago or peeps peeps i think i got these years and years ago at a gift shop in oklahoma city so i do shop locally you guys this is kind of an apron dress i think my inspiration for this was my friend klaus dalby that i just um did an interview with yesterday and i’ll try to remember to put the link there but it’s kind of like an apron dress here i’ll moon you so you can see that it opens in the back but it’s got great pockets and i just got it and i’m really thrilled about it so if it’s still available i will definitely put a link below and my boots are dover sadlery muck boots i have had these for i would say 26 years they’re probably my favorite pair of work boots they’re comfortable i think they’re cute i wear them with everything they’ve got that equestrian vibe i kind of like and then let’s see i forgot to tell you about my earrings my earrings are lucky brand and i got these at t.j.maxx a long time ago i love anything turquoise that is the southwest gal in me the colorado southwest gallon me so we actually cheated and i did this before i started stuart’s telling me to move out of the sun i think so i actually did this little fashion epilogue at the beginning because i’m getting ready to get all hot and sweaty showing you um showing you how to do some pruning on your boxwood so let’s get to it
