Rewilding My Lot

The Mexican Olive (Cordia boissieri) was significantly affected by hard freezes in its first two winters here. Each time it recovered strongly, but last year it effectively had to grow a completely new tree from the ground up (only a few inches of trunk and parts of the lowest branch survived the freeze). Despite that small start, by the end of the year it was 7 ft tall and 10 ft wide.

The first photo in this post shows in more detail just how many branches originate low to the ground. I would prefer the canopy to be raised to give more space in this small garden. I don’t think this will ever be a single trunk tree, but by pruning I hope to encourage it to grow more upwards.

We had several days of freezing in January 2026, which caused all the Mexican Olive leaves to die. Unlike last year, I am already seeing new leaves budding out up to 4 ft from the ground, and green under scraped bark within a few inches of the top of the tree. This is very encouraging. (Last year it was April before I saw any signs of recovery.)

Although we could technically get another freeze this year, I decided to proceed with pruning because I don’t want the tree to waste energy growing leaves on branches that will be removed. If we do get another freeze in March, I will protect the lower trunk with mulch as I did in January.

I removed any lower branches that were growing primarily sideways, and prioritized branches that had more vertical direction. The original leading branch died last year and there are a couple of candidates for its replacement.

So that creates some more space underneath and reduces its horizontal spread. Next year I will assess its structure again, but for now I’d like it to grow even more resilient. It’s already looking a lot stronger than it did a year ago, and of course it will look even better with new leaves.