Source: Camellia Forest (NC)
Size shipped: #1 pot (measured 1.5' without leaves)
Planted: #2 RootBuilder II pot, arcillite/zeolite and fir bark and Osmocote Plus and a bit of that Miracle-Gro Moisture Control stuff left over from the previous owners of the place, April 2021
First flowering: Not yet
Awww yeah, baby! I'd been wanting for some time to try this one in a container for our shaded patio, and ordering the incense-cedar from Camellia Forest gave me the perfect excuse (as the shipping cost would have been rather steep for just a single plant, and it was one of the few online nurseries that actually carried Ashe magnolia).
But it's not just the oversized, tropical-looking leaves that sold me on this plant -- if that was all I wanted, I could have just gone for the more common Magnolia macrophylla (bigleaf magnolia) instead. Rather, Ashe magnolia has two major advantages over bigleaf magnolia: (1) smaller size, topping out more in the 15-20' range, and (2) flowering at a much younger age, around 3 years old instead of more like 12 years.
However, Ashe magnolia is reportedly not as cold-hardy as bigleaf magnolia; I've only seen it quoted as hardy to USDA zone 6. So just to be on the safe side, I overwintered it mostly in my garage for its first winter with us; it's my understanding that cold-hardiness improves with age as root systems grow.
In late May 2021, when it looked like the last leaf had come loose from it for the time being, I pinched off the terminal bud on the main trunk in order to induce some sort of branching -- there was only one branch up to that point, and it was almost at the base. It didn't end up working though, which tells me that next time I need to cut more.