Smoke Tree

Just a quick tip today on something I noticed on smoke tree's.

I started on a new garden recently and in the middle of the garden it has this mature smoke tree, looking really nice with it's deep purple coloured leaves, but I could not for the life of me work out what was troubling me about the tree, there was something not right and it was bothering me, I kept looking at it as I was weeding some borders, and it was only when I was weeding underneath the tree I noticed what I was looking at but could not identify what was bothering me!

It was the leaves, they were beautiful, large, vigrant at the bottom of the tree on some new sucker branches and as I looked up the tree sure enough the leaves were getting smaller and smaller the higher I looked.

So for me personally I prefer when the tree is hard pruned and reduced in winter time allowing completely new growth the following year, where you get those large broad deep purple leaves that I really like.

These pictures are from another garden, not the tree I have been talking about but the pictures do show you what was catching my eye.