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? I think they should be cut in summer, 'after flowering' but it flowers
fairly continuously from April onwards and still has a few blooms now.

I also have a lavender bush getting taller each year. I believe you can't
cut them hard back without killing them. If, instead of trimming just the
flower stalks away, I carefully cut each stem back to about four leaves or
so, would that help it stay lower? I don't know the variety, but it is
nothing unusual.

Thanks for any suggestions.
E.