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The Original Jake · 07-04-2013, 06:58 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

On Sun, 7 Apr 2013 17:58:49 +0100 (BST), wrote:

I cut them back to 3' in the autumn, but they have suffered badly.
They aren't dead, but most of the live shoots are near the top.
My concern is that, if I cut them back into very old wood, they
may not survive it. If I don't cut them back hard, they will
get out of hand. Any comments?

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

I always used to chop them back to about a foot from the ground in
late March. All I did the preceding year was to prune off dead flower
heads (to encourage more). Somehow the dead wood always produced
shoots again.

I dug the big ones up last year though and planted the dwarf "Buzz"
varieties for more colour variation in a given area. I chopped these
back at the beginning of March to stumps and they are shooting nicely
now.

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling from the East end of Swansea Bay where it got
dark today an hour earlier than a week ago!