I have a bed behind my house that has numerous Cardinal Flowers in it.
It is perfect there, the deer don't touch this plant and the bed stays
very wet (it is where the lot was cut into a steep hillside to build
the house, so there is a lot of seepage), so they thrive. The only
problem is that the plants get very tall, a little out of whack for
that bed, and end up falling over (still blooming) and cover a walkway
and generally don't look very good.

I wondered if I can trim these back, before they bloom,
to reduce the height of the plant but not impede them from still
blooming like mad. And if so, when??? I'd love to have
these be 2-3 foot high blooming plants rather than 4-5 footers that
tend to flop over. Lacking any response here, I figure I will just
kind of experiment on them and see what happens, but I wondered if
anyone had tried this. I am doing the same with the Marsh Fleabane in
the same flowerbed and it appears to work for me.

Thanks.

andyd
adonnelly AT austin DOT "RR" DOT com