On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:59:55 +0100, Frank Booth Snr
wrote:

Viburnum Bodnantense tends to be less spreading in habit than
Grandiflora and also has a longer flowering period over the late autumn
winter months with a its main bloom in late winter. Otherwise both
shrubs are similar with rose pink buds and white/pink blooms.

It sounds like you only gave the new stems a light pruning. Normally you
don't bother pruning it. But if you do it's best to leave it when it
finishes flowering in late March then give it good prune, taking out all
of the old wood and cutting back the newer stems by about 1/2 their
length, additionally removing any overlapping or crowded stems to open
up the shrub a bit. If you prune now you will take out the flowering
buds as well.

Thanks for your reply. I'll hang on till late March, but could I ask
you a bit more about 'old wood'. Imagine this plant is like an
upturned cone standing on it's point, about 8 feet high (now that I've
lopped it) with a cone angle at it's base of about 30-35 deg.
Spreading up from the point of the cone there's up to 18 or so long
straight branches of what I would call old wood- it's fairly dense.
Almost all the new growth is sprouting out vigourously from the top of
each these dead straight branches - all stout and mature. There's a
healthy leaf presence at the base but it doesn't look like it's going
to develop into much. So, when you talk about taking out the old
wood, it seems to me that there is nothing *but* old wood with new
growth sprouting out of the top? Might it be a bit drastic to cut it
all out? Effectively that would mean cutting the plant down
completely to its base. How about taking out half of them and cut the
other half back by 50% in length - then perhaps the same principle the
following year?

Incidentally, I notice that there are new buds, tiny tips most of them
but abundant, sprouting freely along the length of each of the old
stems. A few of them have started to poke out and are showing the
beginning of a leaf but nothing like the vigour of the top shoots
which have put on an extra 2 feet in the last 4 weeks! Basically,
this seems to want to be a very tall plant.

Thanks for you patience and any further insight.