One of the more interesting additions to this year's garden is the "Shooting Sapphires" Duranta tree (or is it a vine?). We found this plant at a grocery store (truly) and knew nothing about it, but liked the look of it and decided to give it a shot. We loved the delicate purple flowers that are outlined with a thin white stripe along the side. We also thought it might be a fun challenge, so we planted it in a heavy pot and started the experiment.
After more research, I learned that our duranta is traditionally a vine, but can be trained into a tree, similar to the one we found. Apparently, the tree-like durantas will continue to shoot branch like vines out from the top to resemble a small, ornamental tree. It is also a fast grower and may need to be trained more to prevent the vines from going every which way.
Ours is about 6 weeks old, and it definitely is starting to look a bit out of control. At the same time, I'm not an expert pruner and I have no idea how to pare it back. Pruning is not an easy task, and you can do some serious damage if you over prune. So, I'm a bit nervous about taking the task on. At the same time, I don't want the tree to start to tip over from the excess vines. I supposed I will have to deal with it, but for now I feel like the mother of a toddler with golden ringlets who is afraid to get her little girl's hair cut for the first time and lose all those golden ringlets. Eventually, those ringlets will get dirty and tiresome, but it will probably take a little bit longer than usual to force the first haircut.
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