"Limbed Up" Our Front Yard Saucer Magnolia Tree

I mentioned in the post about our King Crimson Maple tree last month that we had planted nine trees including a Magnolia tree that we put in our front yard.  That's it above.  After I 'limbed it up' a bit by taking the leaves/shoots/small branches off the bottom few feet of the main trunks of this Saucer Magnolia.  We've never had a Magnolia of our own, but Equation Boy/Man and Vic had one at their house and Greg, our former neighbor had one.  Nat has long fancied them, so in working with Chris Paul at Green Grass Landscaping, we decided to put in a Saucer Magnolia in the front yard.

In looking through the care and pruning advice in this piece, I decided to work on the tree to put more of the energy into the top range of the young tree to try to grow it up a bit.  Ours had leaves all the way to the ground, but if you look at photos of intermediate growth Saucers or larger, mature Saucer Magnolias, the successful ones have been 'limbed up' to get the flowers up in the top parts of the tree.  I also took out a shoot from the rootstock.  Based on this little nugget that tells me that Magnolias are usually grafted plants:

Since almost all magnolias are still sold as grafted plants, Andrew says, be sure to prune out any shoots that may sprout at the base, emerging from the rootstock.

I'll use this post/photo to document the growth over time and I'll try to revisit this tree when it flowers for the first time for us next Spring.

For those keeping track at home with our #NewOldBackyard (or front yard, in this case), we've now planted: 2 flowering pears, 1 Japanese flowering cherry, 2 Lindens, 1 Dawn Redwood, a Corkscrew Willow, a Crimson King Norway Maple and now this Saucer Magnolia.  I'm thinking I have to get around to documenting those two flowering pears.  One of them is a 3" caliper variety that took on a great deal of shock, but seems to have stabilized.  The other one is a 1" or so Menards sale variety.   We have eyes on a series of Frans Fontaine European Hornbeams for the spot against our fence on the north side.