Sharing my method of creating a small tree, bouquet form Pittosporum.
This Pittosporum is against the blank wall of a shed/laundry room. It's my solution to adding interest to an otherwise uninteresting wall, in order to create a fan display of trunks in front of it. There's a small walk forming the outside edge of the bed that surrounds this tree. I also want a tree canopy at that location in order to provide shade for those using the walk. It's a fairly tight space so I have to make it fit.
To give a little background, this tree was installed as a 3-gallon shrub in July of '18. At that time is was 16" tall and had a similar spread. (I drew an approximation at the base of the tree in the first picture.) Typically, I like plenty of trunks with which to make the large bouquet form. Often, when the plant starts the first growing season, I cut it to the ground in order to increase the number of trunks and make them better organized. Here, I didn't do that because I was more in a "get 'er done'" frame of mind and resolved to accept trunks just as how they came from the bush. (And so I could have something to complain about! :-)
The first year, I fed the plant with common 10-10-10 garden fertilizer, chicken feed style 2 times, and plan on feeding it for at least 3 years, but since feeding starts early in the Spring, it will get 3 feedings per year.
A large shrub growing up against a wall tends to splay in all directions. The back trunks would dip inward toward the building and curve forward again as they approached the eaves, which I consider bad form. I wanted them to grow straight up without any dips, where they could clear the small overhang without bending. Thus, I installed 3 (2"X2") wood stakes in a flat fan arrangement at the back of the tree and tied the three main back trunks to them at several locations along their length. Various other trunks were loosely tied to each other, or the stakes -- whatever worked -- so as to better organize their arrangement ... as if a coarse comb had been run through the tree from the bottom of the trunks to the top.
In the left picture, above, I've outlined the general form of the canopy, none of which exists at this time. At this point, the entire tree -- trunks, branches and foliage -- resides within the "V"-shape trunk structure. Interested in getting to the tree form in the most efficient and quickest way, I haven't allowed the tree to grow outside of the V-shape, which it would happily do if not guided by pruning and tying. It doesn't take very long for the stems to grow stiff, and as that happens ties can be removed. But I usually leave them as sometimes tying the stem higher up may have a tendency to pull a lower portion out of alignment. However, there's not much precision to it.
At the beginning of every growth spurt, I'm deciding if I need to direct all the growth energy into the terminal bud. If so, I immediately remove all laterals. But more often, I will leave them all. In that case, I leave all the laterals on until the following growth spurt begins a couple of months later. This way, during the interim, those leaves get to feed the roots with more energy. But when the next growth spurt begins, I quickly remove those previous laterals, instead of allowing them to grow more sideways, so that all the energy is put into the terminal bud and its new laterals, thus allowing the plant to gain greater height and eliminate growth into the red, X'd-out area (see left picture.) There is never anything allowed to grow in those X'd out areas as it would not only be a waste of the plants time and energy, but a lot more larger branches to prune and larger wounds to heal.
Since the bottom of the canopy will begin equal to the height of the roof, above the roof there can be all manner of trunks branching and branches branching and I don't care what they do unless they violate hard core rules pruning. Mostly though, they will be sorting themselves uniformly on account of light being available from every direction. Since the tree is currently left-heavy -- most of the tall trunks are on that side -- I'll temporarily stop any of those that reach the roof (by cutting) and give those lower down on the right side a chance to catch up. Trimming off the old laterals at the beginning each new growth spurt, allows the lower trunks to get more light, and speeds their progress.
Once the canopy begins to develop, foliage will begin disappearing from the zone marked "future trunks." At some point later, within a couple of years, there will be no foliage left at this part of the tree. It will be nothing but clear trunks.
I expect that all the short trunks will catch up to the roof line by the end of summer. As soon as that happens, the canopy, which will need much less guidance, can start developing.
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