Saturday, 26 April 2014

Dying shrub.

I have a shrub in the garden which was here when we moved here 18 years ago and it looks so lovely in the summer with cascades of white flowers. This picture was taken in June 2007.


Every year I have to convince the gardener it doesn't need pruning so harshly as he once did it and it ended up with just little pom-poms of flowers.

Late last year one side of it looked very dead with no leaves so I asked the gardener to cut out the dead wood and see if it would recover.  It has started to produce leaves again but still half of it was completely bare. Decided to have a go myself and gave it quite a butchering.  I am sure my arm will be aching tomorrow after the hard sawing.  Stuart came out to help and tried building a bivouac with the dead branches, with the help of Poppy of course. 


These were only about a third of the dead branches





This is what is left of the shrub now.  Think I might have to find something to replace it. 


2 comments:

Donna said...

It looks like a bridal bush somewhat. Most bushes can survive a hard pruning and they do not suffer from it. I think it will be fine, but it might take a few years to fill in again. I had one bush which I had to cut down severely but it is over 10 feet tall now again!

Sheila Khan said...

Yes checked it out. It is Spireae Bridlewreath.