...been slowly working on an IKEA christmas tree over the last few years.

My second attempt with a spruce, as the first one ended badly; had this live picea abies as a Christmas leftover and decided to give it another attempt.
But given how finicky these plays seem to be, went extremely slowly, reducing its size in repeated prunings over the last three years.

Last winter foliage has finally been taken down to what I expect to be the starting point to build its future shape. Some branches still need to be reduced in length, but that will need to happen after the new growth gets long enough.

I’ll post some picture one day (as soon a I can get one decent enough to get published), but what I wanted to say for now is that amongst everything I had expected, getting backbudding directly from the trunk was definitely not included. It’s popping buds like crazy.

Amazing plants, really...

I have the same experience, also working slowly over 4 years now. Branches almost pruned back to the length I want, and also backbudding like crazy.

Same here. Dwarf alberta spruce backbuds like crazy in my conditions. I liked to work on das for design training. so in january 2020 when Ikea sold out leftover christmas trees I got myself 11 of them and put together as a big forest. This winter after a full growing season I made the first styling. I am amazed how fast it was to create a fairly realistic forest and how cheap it was. Hope it backbuds as good as my other ones. Looking forward for the future. Fun to play with.