Elm Ground Layer

A few weeks ago I decided to try an experiment. What you see in these images is a species of elm that naturalized within some of my massive privet hedges. I've seen a number of these growing and over the years they were ruthless hacked back and whacked with the weed whip and just keep coming back. This particular one has developed burls and an overall ugliness to the trunk that I find appealing. The base is about 5" wide. I believe these might be a slippery elm. I tore off some leaves and when rubbing the petiole they have a slippery feeling. The leaves are very rough on the top surface and have a double serration along the the edge, alternating from large to small and the base of leaves have a non-symmetrical oblique and acute curve to them. Regardless of the species of elm, I will proceed with the explanation of the experiment. This tree's trunk curves well below and behind the underside of a privet. It is non-intriguing beneath the surface when I dug a couple inches below. It also has reverse taper between the burls and trunk line and would make removal difficult having to remove the huge privet and elm together. I decided to try ground-layering this. Right below the burl at the dotted line is the old soil line which was dug out to prepare for wire and a new soil medium as indicated in (b). This is where I took a heavy gauge wire and wrapped it tight around the trunk and tightened the wire as hard as I can with pliers, biting into the bark as shown in red in figure (c). I then took plastic lathe that I had from a home remodel project and cut a strip of it and wrapped it around the trunk and wired the two ends of the strip of lathe together as shown in (d) to form a "pot". I filled this up with a mixture of sphagnum moss and Turface MVP covering up some of the burl as well as indicated in (e). Over time, this trunk will swell and the wire will cut into the cambium. Theoretically new roots will begin to grow into the new medium directly above the wire. In an ideal situation this will take 8 weeks. Other times this will be left on until next spring. When the new roots colonize this "pot" I can remove the tree from it's old root system by sawing through the trunk below the wire and pot it up.