In message ,
Janet writes
In article ,
says...

I have a very old berberis darwinii. I spent yesterday reducing its height
again and thinning out the rest so that it is only about nine feet in any
dimension now. That's a wild guess as it is on a slope. Him indoors would
have liked it cut back much further but I dont want to lose it and the
trunks are already bare for the first few feet. How much butchery might it
take?

Any amount. Whatever is left above ground will sprout. My neighbour
had his reduced from 8ft tall and wide to 2 ft stumps, with a chainsaw,
earlier this year. Every stump has put on 2 ft of new growth.

Janet


This made me smile... A couple of years ago I cut two honeysuckle
shrubs down to 6" stumps to allow access for my garage to be re-roofed.

After the job was done, I planted two more alongside the stumps, late in
the year, and tied them in to a trellis on the garage wall.
The following year the new ones were struggling to compete with the
vigorous shoots from the stumps. :-)
--
Gordon H
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