Taxodium distichum ‘Gee Whiz’, Dwarf Bald Cypress

May 17th, 2010

The third and final tree I bought on my weekend trip to Gee Farms was this very cute little dwarf bald cypress called ‘Gee Whiz’. It is also called a witch’s broom, as that is the type of mutation it has.

Taxodium distichum 'Gee Whiz' Dwarf Bald Cypress

I have a thing, lately, for dwarf conifers. I have a thing for Japanese style gardens and bonsai but I can’t really do bonsai, the pots and all that, I don’t have any good spot for them. In ground bonsai, sometimes called niwaki or niwagi, I can do however, and I like doing it with little dwarf conifers.

See, normally, with bonsai, a big portion of the growth control is root pruning, with in ground plants you can’t dig them up and prune the roots all the time, so you need something else to reduce growth, and dwarf forms of plants are perfect for this.

Two years ago I built my water feature. I built it raised and in a thin area between the retaining stones and the pond I planted small dwarf conifers, sort of as a mini garden unto itself. Not all of what I planted survived though, so I used my new “Gee Whiz” to fill in one of the gaps.

Currently I’ve got a tiny dwarf barberry, a super-dwarf form of the already dwarf alberta spruce, a dwarf mugo pine in standard form, and a dwarf hinoki cypress. Pictures of them all can be found here.

This new dwarf bald cypress will fit in well, and I will be able to train and selectively prune it to form a really neat shape.

I think it’d be cool even without the water feature to build a rock garden with dramatic looking boulders and back fill it with soil and plant only dwarf plants like you’re a giant looking down on an alpine forest. I’ll probably do that one day.

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