On 01/01/2014 18:51, Emery Davis wrote:
On Wed, 01 Jan 2014 18:20:26 +0000, Spider wrote:

On 01/01/2014 13:08, Nick Maclaren wrote:
Impulse purchase for a gap, where I have failed with a few more exotic
plants :-)

My question is how happy they are to be pruned back to the ground (i.e.
will they reshoot from the rootstock or only the stem).
From the ones I have seen, I suspect that they will be happy,
but those might have been multiple plants, planted deep.

I didn't do very well with mine by treating it that harshly as a young
plant. I have read that the better treatment (esp if you want to
maintain a show of red stems) is to leave it unpruned for the first
2-3yrs in order to gain a bushy plant, then subsequently prune out older
wood, leaving the younger, redder growth as your display. Even within
that regime, it is worth pruning out dead and diseased wood so that it
is healthy and looks attractive.


Yes, I actually killed one by pruning a new plant back. I guess it
didn't have the roots to get it going again. So I agree, give it a
couple of years. Once established you can cut it back to the ground if
you want.

What I'm not sure of is whether or not it is stem-rooting, which would
allow deeper planting and, probably, more stem production. Does anyone
here know?

They are indeed. Should be no problem planting it deep. Very easy to
root cuttings or just dig up a rooted stem. We're filling in an empty
section of hedge with plants obtained this way.

-E





Great! Very helpful information, which may just tempt me to try again.
Thanks for that, Emery.

--
Spider.
On high ground in SE London
gardening on heavy clay