Pollard a mature flowering dogwood, use it as a hardy kiwi trellis?

May 17, 2020 15:11:42

In my west-facing front yard there's a large flowering dogwood that hasn't been pruned in a while (I moved in three years ago and I haven't done anything to it). It's getting into the overhead wires.

Recently I obtained a couple of hardy kiwis which didn't end up working out for the space I originally intended them to occupy. A permie gardening friend of mine suggested I pollard the flowering dogwood and plant one of the kiwis nearby, which would then climb the dogwood. I haven't been able to find examples of anything like this online and I have no idea if pollarding a mature flowering dogwood is a good or a terrible idea, nor using it as a trellis for an aggressive vine (which I plan to aggressively prune).

Thoughts?

May 20, 2020 18:11:28

I'm pretty sure the doogwoods (Cornus florida,) on our lot are suffering Anthracnose dieback, and have been since long before we moved here. I'm assuming we'll loose them all, but i'm not in a rush to cut them all down. One -- maybe 3" diameter trunk? -- had pretty severe die back. Given the way many of the dogwoods seem happy to sprout new growth from mature trunks, we essentially pollarded it. The tree has responded with new growth up and down the trunk. Will it ever flower again? Too soon to say for my tree.

What it sounds like is your dogwood is in the wrong place. If all you were asking about was the dogwood, i don't think i would encourage you. But it sounds like you're willing to surrender the dogwood and use it as ta trellis. Will hardy kiwi die back to the ground for you each year or will it just keep growing? They appear to have a very long life time. If it doesn't die back every year, i would propose putting in a trellis that would have a lifetime commensurate. If it dies back every year, it seems you could grow the kiwi on the dogwood and, if the dogwood did die, you could easily replace it with a more substantial standard later.

I've been thinking about appropriate supports with respect to native and wild passion fruit and trumpet creeper. The passion fruit dies back each year, so i'm just going to make a tripod of logs, and when they rot, i will replace them. The trumpet creeper, though, has a woody trunk, and if the supports rot from under it, all that plant will collapse and die. So there i want something less transient.

Chris has 3 apples and Monika has 4 apples. With this tiny ad they can finally make a pie!

Looking for cold-climate growers to join a GOOF livestream panel (Missoula)

https://permies.com/t/369111/cold-climate-growers-join-GOOF