On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:35:40 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

I would do it now, but it will of coarse come back as that's how it flowers.
I must have a go at mine as the recent gales have ripped it off the wall and
its hanging in an unsightly way!

Thanks for replying. So, it's ok to do this quite brutally, leaving
just a brown skeleton with short stems? I'd like to cut back well
behind the existing new buds in the hope that fresh buds will appear
on the truncated stems. I don't know if that's a vain hope or not.

(is there a technical or gardener's term for this growth phenomenon?
It'll be obvious that I'm a newcomer to this but I've noticed that
many plants are very fussy about where they're trimmed back to -
lavenders for example, and I've got a ceanothus that looks as though
it has no choice but to become leggy. OTOH a viburnum I've just
posted about appears to be happy to be pruned anywhere and will always
obligingly sprout new growth at whatever the point of the cut. Is
this the case with the H.petiolaris?)