I have a Chinese Elm and a Japanese Acer I’ve been working for a little while which are growing quite nicely, so I’m not a complete novice but not far off.
I got this Syzygium in early March. It arrived looking very green and healthy but has fairly steadily declined since to this point, where it feels like it’s clinging on to life and I don’t know how to help it.
For full context: I put it straight outside with my other trees as soon as I got it. Unfortunately though, I live in a flat in the UK and the only outside space is a roof terrace that unhelpfully doubles as a wind tunnel with very few opportunities to create shelter. I don’t know whether it was the same for everyone in the UK, but where I am most of March and April felt like relentless windstorms, all of which battered my trees. There were several mornings I woke up to find trees blown over - one morning I discovered that a metal garden chair had apparently been picked up and dropped right on top of it for the night, so in the end I relented and brought them all inside and placed near a big, bright window. The Elm and Acer seem to love it there and are growing like mad…very much not the case for this one though.
The soil it’s in is the same soil I received it in. Which to my somewhat uninformed eye looks a bit peaty in makeup and a bit dense in structure, but I’ve been reluctant to try to repot it to avoid putting more stress on the tree. Similarly, it looks like it could perhaps benefit from a light prune at the top to encourage some new, hopefully healthier growth below, but I’ve resisted that temptation on the same basis. I do however feel like it needs to some sort of urgent intervention or it’ll be dead in a couple of weeks. For additional context, I bought my mother the same tree at the same time as I bought my own and hers is doing great. The only difference in management is that hers has never been outside - it’s been living its best life on her kitchen windowsill.
Grateful for any suggestions.