Enjoy the cedar, even if you're tight on space
Sunday November 29 2009
It is not unusual to see a young cedar tree growing in a small garden, or at least a garden much too small for it ever to reach full size. In a way this is a pity, but not entirely. Cedar makes a magnificent tree at maturity, tall and broad with a massive trunk and main branches. It is a tree often seen close to large houses on country estates.
There are three kinds of cedar. The cedar of Lebanon is the most storied in history, its timbers prized by kings and emperors for the construction of temples and places. It is native to Lebanon, growing at altitude in the mountains, and it features on the Lebanese flag. The Atlas cedar is sometimes considered to be a separate form of the same species. This cedar grows naturally in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, again at altitude. Many of the prized forms of the Atlas cedar have wax-coated blue-green needles.
The third kind of cedar is the deodar or Himalayan cedar, which grows in the lower reaches of that mountain range. The word 'deodar' is derived from the Sanskrit name of 'devadara', which means timber of the gods, and this tree also had an exalted place in the great civilisations of the east.
The deodar cedar is the national tree of Pakistan. The deodar looks different to the others, it has longer, more slender needles, of a lighter green, and it droops at the tips of the twigs, giving a lightly drooping appearance. It is very pretty as a young tree, making a perfect drooping skirt of branches.
Each of the cedar species can make well over 20 metres tall and as much, or more, across. The Irish champion specimens are within one metre of each other at an impressive 36 metres tall. They reach that size in about a century and a half, but they can easily outgrow the space of an average garden in a couple of decades.
If you have space to allow one of these wonderful trees to grow to full size, they need good, deep soil, well drained. They all originate in areas of dry, warm climate and do best in the drier parts of the country in an open sunny position, and not too exposed. Do not feed the young trees as it makes them prone to breakages by strong winds. There is a tendency to bush out from low down and the lower branches should be removed as the tree grows to give a clean stem of between two and five or six metres.
And if there is not enough space in your garden to allow the tree to reach full size, you can enjoy its beauty until it gets too large. Pruning back inevitably ruins the natural grace of the tree after a time. And remember, the more the tree outgrows its space, the more it will cost to take down eventually!
Sunday Independent
