Last week I drove past the Paulownias I wrote about in 2009, and realized that they deserved another blog post. In the four years since that post, all three trees have shot up.
I kept trying to shoot an image with the two paired trees in it, minus the utility lines, but it wasn’t doable without risking life and limb. The trees have grown higher than the house and the utility lines, and have easily tripled (at least) in size.
Two paulownias planted four years ago now shade almost the entire front yard.
The smaller of the two trees measures perhaps 12″ DBH. The once-sunny walkway is now almost entirely shaded.
It’s a little tricky to see, but the right-hand tree is larger than the one to the left. Directly behind it stands a large Japanese maple; in the 2009 post you can see the maple’s fall color, and compare its trunk size to the now-towering Paulownia’s.
Deborah Howe
Taking Place In The Trees 
Gorgeous trees, but have they made a plan to reduce their size?
Poor A. japonicum–maybe they’ll wantit moved, before it gets eaten alive!
Thanks for the comment, Guy! I don’t know if the owner of these trees has a plan, actually; from watching the trees appear and grow over the last few years, and seeing how they’re placed, I suspect that they were bought for quick growth and beautiful mauve flowers (perhaps from an ad in the back of a magazine, since Paulownia isn’t generally commercially available around here). They are growing at just below the speed of light; it may be that the owner realizes they’re a bit big for his lot, and removes them, before they fully outcompete the Japanese maple.
It’s hard to go back on a decision, especially one so big and green.
It would be a challenge to reduce them over time to fit the space, but it could be done. 2 Paulownias are in front of a big estate in the PNW, 100+ years old, and ticking along, with plenty of room though.
Hard to backtrack, it’s true — but the space these trees are in is pretty small, and fast-growers tend to be weak-wooded. The novelty of such a large tree may begin to wear off should a limb fall on the house in a few years…