Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Lifting Brugmansia's Skirts, 0 by Kell

Kell wrote:
Hi X.
I think shape is all personal preference, what your eye sees as pretty. And sometimes you are stuck at least for awhile, with the piece you get to start one with.

I prefer the standard form myself mainly because I have a small yard and I love so many kinds of plants I need to stuff in. LOL. But I also find the bush ones get so huge here for they live outside in the ground year round, that they take over! They are impossible to keep looking neat too for they get so big. Too messy with constantly with dead flowers and older yellowing leaves.

I can control a standard, keep it tended and underplant which is best of all. LOL..

To get a good standard tree, it is easiest to start with a sucker from a bush or to grow a seedling. Seedlings usually grow straight and true esp if you stake them from the beginning. I use wooden skewers for my little seedlings to keep them straight.

Here is a standard of mine that has been the center of my courtyard for a couple of years. I have plants in pots all below it so I can have maximum color contrast and impact. This was a seedling to start with.