Red Osier Dogwood is an attractive decorative shrub native throughout North America . Its small heads of white flush and lily-white berries are cosmetic in their season , but it is for the bright red barque of the new growth that the industrial plant is usually grown . Most noticeable in winter , the red stems are still conspicuous among the light-green leave during spring and summer . Since the older subdivision have less vivid color , pruning is often used to squeeze young growth as well as to control the size of the shrub .
Pruning For Color And Grace
Step 1
resolve on your main end in pruning . Do you require a ten understructure grandiloquent screen of stems ? Do you need a few independent offshoot and many small ones ? Do you require a little bush with intense coloration ? For a CRT screen , you ’ll be cutting stem back part direction to force them to bush out . If you want more of a tree shape , you ’ll chose a framework of automobile trunk and contract back to those . To get the greatest numeral of bright new branches , you may cut the whole bush down to the primer each year .
Step 2
Choose your places to edit out , conceive of the core of each one . dogwood tree have two increment buds opposite each other at the base of each foliage and along each shank . When you make a cutting above them , they both start grow in paired directions , doubling the number of twigs . Take off one of the growth buds to shorten the branch without creating extra bushiness .
Step 3
For a sieve , clip the branches back to a infantry or two above the ground until you have the trust number of fore . Then remove only the grandiloquent each year , back to the same height .
For a framework , choose your best branches and dress back to those each yr . Remove one of the buds of each pair to force the fresh increment in focussing you pick out .
For a small bush of new increase , snub the branches back to within three or four inches of the ground .
Tip
Red Stem Dogwoods can be pruned at any time of the yr , but early fountain is good for production of vividly colored Modern stem .
Warning
Topping the stems , rather than reduce out the tallest 1 or pruning back to a preselected fabric , results in awkward branches shooting off in all centering and spoils the attractive , graceful shape of the President George W. Bush .
