"Curly Sue" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 22:28:55 GMT, "Vox Humana"
wrote:


"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
I had 3 of these along my property line when I bought my house. They
were
my
neighbor's. The moron cut them down. I can't tell you much about
growing
them, but you'd better get yourself a hat with mosquito net like
fishermen
wear because when those plants start making flowers and you smell them,
you're gonna be sleeping out there in a lawn chair. :-)


Do you recall how tall they got? how wide? I appreciate your comment on
the fragrance. In my Google search, I found a couple of sites that said
they were only mildly fragrant and you had to put you nose in the flower
to
smell it. I have a love-hate relationship with Google. Sometimes you
find
great information and sometimes you get widely divergent information
about
the same plant.

I have one in the corner of my yard and it does get big! I would say
that 8' x 8' is a good estimate. The size sort of creeps up on you;
all of a sudden you realize it's huge. I didn't notice how much it
has grown until I looked at photos of when I moved in four years ago
when it was fairly small. It tends to have a messy growth habit with
sticks going every which way making pruning a guess. This becomes
more apparent when the leaves drop.

Anyway, this spring when I realized it was making inroads into the
backyard, I trimmed it back, keeping some of the height and width to
maintain it as a privacy screen.

One fall I cut it back quite a bit after the leaves had dropped. The
next spring it bloomed like crazy for the first time since I had it.
So I assume it blooms on new wood? The fragrance was overpowering.

I really like it.


I'm glad to hear that it gets that big. I have a spot in a peninsula bed
that separates us from the neighbor. I want to screen off an unsightly part
of their back yard (actually, the underside of their two-story deck as their
entire back yard is unsightly and I only have so much time and money!). As
far as blooming, everything I have read says to prune immediately after
blooming. They apparently bloom on the previous year's growth. I don't
know if they actually set flower buds the previous year like azaleas. The
recommendations for rejuvenating the shrub is to removed 1/3 of the old
canes each year for three years.