Is this tree pot bound and dying? (Pics inc.)

[waltzingparrot]

Tree begins with an 'E', that's all I can tell you.

It obviously looks too big for the pot. Do I just lop off a foot from each branch. I do feed it a liquid feed, but the leaves have gone yellow in last few weeks and it now just looks very ill.

Can it be saved?

Take it out the pot and plant it in your garden? We do that a lot when shrubs and trees get too big for their pots and they usually thrive.

It definitely needs a bigger pot, can’t you repot it or plant it in the ground?

Could you move it to a larger pot? Also plastic pots retain moisture better than terracotta. How long has it been in that pot?

Unfortunately, we went completely patio a couple of years ago so apart from a couple of shrubs we worked the slabs around, everything is in pots.

It's probably been in the pot 8-10 years. We do live with an ash/oak forest behind us. I could sneak it in there.

Just get a bigger pot

We do live with an ash/oak forest behind us. I could sneak it in there.

Don't do that, you could introduce disease.

Bigger pot or - I would do this - take out a paving slab and give the poor thing some proper earth!
Is it an escallonia?

Lift up one of your flags, stick it straight in the ground, a few pebbles to make the surface look good

It needs a new pot but beware, you may lose the old one or damage the tree more in the process. I repotted a 15yr old ish bay recently that was very tricky to get out as it had formed a big tap root that had escaped and blocked the main drainage hole of the pot, making it extra grippy and troublesome to wriggle out. I ended up damaging the last few cms of the tap root and the tree took a bit of fierce manoeuvring to free up. I managed to save the (big and expensive!) pot it was in, thankfully but the tree is looking a bit sickly in the new pot, a few weeks after repotting .

If it wasn’t in such a good pot before, I’d have just broken the pot to release the tree (equivalent replacement pot would cost £180-£200!).

We do live with an ash/oak forest behind us. I could sneak it in there. No. It doesn't belong in the wild, so don't plant it there.

If you think it's going to die anyway, and you don't want to use a bigger pot, get it out of the existing pot, shake most of the soil off, if it is pot bound, prune some of the roots, then replant it in the same pot with some good new soil. Then prune the top growth to allow for the fact that it doesn't have so many roots to support the top growth. You may kill it, or you may give it a new lease of life

Don't worry, it's not going in the wood.

We don't want to pull up slabs or have bigger pots because it's only a small courtyard size.

Thank you @MereDintofPandiculation , we are going to try your idea.

The pot doesn’t need to be much bigger, it can still fit in the corner you’ve got it in and not take up too much space, just the next size up will be fine.