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Shrubs and climbers grown as small trees

When small trees aren't small enough, shrubs can step in and provide the perfect alternative. With training and pruning, you can create a bespoke tree to be kept at the size you need for your garden, balcony or patio. You can then enjoy the huge choice of evergreen and deciduous shrubs in all their diversity of leaf form, texture, flower colour and scent

Practical tips

Some shrubs lend themselves to being small multi-stemmed trees, such as  elder (Sambucus), hazel (Corylus),  Buddleja, Cornus mas (Cornelian cherry) and lilac (Syringa), but some can also be trained as single-stemmed specimens. Wisteria and Buddleja alternifolia are ideal plants to treat in this way

There are several ways you can use shrubs as trees:

Create a multi-stemmed tree

How to do it

Use well-established shrubs that you already have and make a feature of them by thinning stems and clearing the side shoots, leaving a well-developed canopy. This is often known as crown-lifting


Train a young plant to make a standard

How to do it

  1. Work with a straight single-stemmed young plant or rooted cutting
  2. Pot up your young plant into peat-free John Innes No 3 compost using a container a couple of cm wider and deeper than the existing one and place a cane next to the stem
  3. As the stem grows, remove any shoots that emerge and tie the stem to the can using flexible ties or garden twine
  4. Retain any leaves that emerge directly from the stem, as they help encourage healthy growth
  5. Repot every couple of years and in the intervening year replace the top layer of compost with fresh
  6. Take the growing tip out once the stem has grown to the height where you would like the canopy to develop on the top one third
  7. Shorten the shoots as they develop from the stem to encourage bushiness. How often you do this will depend on the rate of growth of your particular shrub
  8. Continue to remove shoots on the lower two thirds of the stem
 

Create a single-stemmed tree from an established potted shrub

How to do it

  1. Buy a container-grown plant from the nursery or garden centre; choose one with a clearly defined leader which is as straight as possible
  2. Cut away other stems, ensuring that two thirds of the shrub is left
  3. Plant in to the garden or a container of peat-free John Innes No 3 compost
  4. To keep growth in check, prune after flowering to well-placed shoots
 

Cloud pruning - for a more formal look

If you have shrubs with well-spaced branches, you can cut the growth to look like very architectural clouds. Our webpage explains how to do this 

Remember that you can enjoy large plants in smaller spaces by using coppicing and pollarding too

Deciduous shrubs to grow as multi-stemmed small trees

Clearing the growth from stems of existing shrubs can 'lift' a border, or make striking feature in the lawn. This 'styling' of shrubs gives you opportunities to underplant with smaller shrubs, perennials and bulbs

Evergreen shrubs to grow as small multi-stemmed trees and clear-stemmed standards

More shrubs and climbers suitable to train into single stemmed trees

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