Linda’s ‘Niwaki’ Production Zone
Welcome to Linda’s ‘Niwaki production zone’. Filmed by our friends, HDmoments, Linda is seen here clipping, Ilex crenata ‘Niwaki’ and among some of her other favourites, Myrtus apiculata, Pinus sylvestris and Taxus cuspidata.
Linda has been with us since 2007. She is highly skilled in clipping and shaping and trains all of our Niwaki.
Her Niwaki Production Zone sits centrally in our nursery and is packed with an ever increasing range of plant types all at various stages of training. Many of these are grown by us and trained by Linda when they are potted on from cuttings into a 7.5Lt pots. To have the most creative control, it is important to start training ‘Niwaki’ while they are relatively young – as soon as a leader or a number of promising dominant stems start developing. Our homegrown Myrtus apiculata are a good example. However some plants such as our Phillyrea latifolia or Osmanthus x burkwoodii have very receptive stems even when more mature and Linda has excellent results with both.
training
As the plant begins to grow Linda will start to train the developing stems. She uses string to deliberately manage their direction and peasticks as a brace to work against the plants natural inclination. She will then move on to more substantial strengths and sizes of bamboo cane as the plants mature.
shaping
As the foliage begins to grow along the branches, she will begin to clear the stems and promote growth into a cloud or pad. She nurtures these patiently over numerable seasons often clipping back quite hard in order to promote a vigorous response from the plant. The more you clip the more the plants say thank you and the sooner you will have thick voluminous pads.
