Garden Tip 214

The rhododendrons in my garden are 35 to 40 years old. After this amount of time, you realize that those 12-inch-tall shrubs planted way back when do indeed grow to be 12 feet high and 12 feet wide. A twelve-foot-wide shrub in a half-acre garden is a whole lot of real estate to give up for a shrub that, although beautiful, flowers for only a couple of weeks in the spring.

The solution to keeping the plant without losing gardening space, is to ‘limb it up’. Starting at ground level, I have removed all of the lower branches up to a height of five to six feet. The higher you go, the narrower it gets. This practice exposes the beautiful structure of the understory branching and creates new areas for planting on the ground below. Yes, another ‘two for’ in the garden!