A few nurseries do, beng. Locally, Loudoun Nurseries in Purcellville, VA grows in Smart Pots, and a place up in PA called Woodlawn Trees uses Rootmaker products. Sooner Plant Farm is a good mail order source using smartpots for at least some of their stock. Most of their maples are available in smartpots at least as one option. For other plants, it varies, although their owner has posted here before and stated they're starting to move towards producing more and more stock in Smart Pots. It's costly to do so, and while people like you and me would pay more for plants grown that way, Mister Bradford Pear and Miss Leyland Cypress don't know or care enough about plants for these types of growing methods to really catch on. The way to "win them over" might be to show them the difference in establisment success rate and speed of growth afterwards - trees grown in root pruning pots (this is anecdotal) seem to establish MUCH faster, and sometimes as if they haven't even been transplanted at all in some cases than B&B or traditional container stock. Or if "high end" landscaping firms started using them more by making the argument to the high-end homeowner that they can (at least somewhat) avoid that 2-4 year period where all their trees look half-dead on top (small leaves, dieback, etc) while they establish by using plants grown by root pruning methods. This varies by species etc.

How the tree responds to a trunk chop will depend mostly on the vitality with which it was growing when it went dormant in the fall. A tree full of energy will respond by back-budding profusely, while one that was stressed may only send out a few new shoots. There is no real reason NOT to undertake the reduction at this time, especially in a tree so genetically vigorous. The tree's energy reserves are finite and about the only downside is you may need to wait while cambial tissues dedifferentiate and reorganize into meristematic tissue to form new buds, but that's not going to cause much delay. I prune/trunk chop containerized maples every year just before budswell in the spring, and though they do indeed bleed, they seem to suffer no ill effects from the practice. Al

Ahh..such is the life of a zone (wallet) buster. I was just wondering if any of you in Minnesota have noticed that some individual plants within the same species might have different cold tolerances depending on their origin. I have noticed that here in Massachusets with my experiments. Good example: I had purchased and planted a mimosa tree about 5 years ago. It grew rapidly to a large size in a few years (many feet each year), before being killed back to the main trunk during our winter month from hell (January 2004). But all the other mimosa trees in my neighborhood--many very large ones that must by 25 years old atleast-live on like nothing happened. So--i've started to experiment with propogation of local zone marginal plants that have withstood the test of time in my area. The moral of the story is that I try to be careful about the plant source. I was in the Central Valley of CA this spring and happened across a HUGE Monrovia operation--they were growing everything. And I bet the plants we buy locally that have a Monrovia tag may be years old but have never experienced a temperature below 30F. Just a thought--

After looking at pics of Acer circinatum 'Burgundy Jewel' - I want one. As a PNW native plant, I first wonder if it can handle humid heat in summer... Has anyone in the East, Midwest, or Southeast tried this plant? If so, at what level of success?