well I was wondering if the tree was struggling to bring nutrients to the top and hence the lack of leaves. I noticed that it's produced new branches near teh bottom of it's trunk. For this reason I thought maybe cutting it down may help to distribute it's nutrients better. Maybe I can get it to produce new branches and will try to get it growing in a more compact way. I will take your advise and wait it out a month or so..

Shala, I pruned down my "Grace" in March for more beautiful foliage this year. It was about 14 feet tall before I pruned it. It is about 6 feet tall now. It has all leafed out in full now, the leaves are all new and it is growing more "branches". It's gorgeous! Brighter red than a japanese maple tree. New growth is red on "Grace" and when you severly prune it, all your leaves will be red. The bush will not smoke out this year, (which is ok by me), but instead will put all of it's energy into bigger, more beautiful leaves instead. I also have a royal purple. I haven't pruned that one since it is only 5 or 6 feet tall and too young. "Grace" is very cold hardy. I live in zone 6 and it had no trouble this winter. My Royal purple made it through fine also. I mulched it real good last fall. Is your smoke bush starting to grow yet? You should be seeing something by now.

peg, do add your zone to your i.d. (see my separate thread). for shrub companions, i suggest plants that give you more than 1 season of interest(the callicarpa is very time limited in appeal) such as: blue conifers, yellow conifers or shrubs,or varieg foliage shrubs.i have a number of these cotinus; some successful pairings are: cornus ivory halo, blue spruce golden weigela or philadelphus or berberis clematis Henryii (white) growing up it eupatorium gateway miscanthus strictus and varieg. for flowers, i agree w/ the mauve, clear pink,lemon yellow,and white palate but if you want to go BOLD, do crocosmia Lucifer growing up through the middle of it! best, mindy

This may be too late for you, but I'll go ahead and mention my experience, in case someone else is trying to figure out what to do. Early this summer, I planted two smokebushes about thirty feet away from a black walnut in my yard - maybe ten feet beyond the canopy. They've both failed to thrive. The leaves turned brown in patches (and the purple one lost its purple color entirely), and a couple of branches have died off completely. It sounds very much like what happened to artdeco. They might have just had a rough time getting established, but I think it's more than that. I went on the web to see what I could find about smokebushes - with some suspicion that the walnut was causing the problem - but there's very little information. Tentatively, I'm going to say that this is a bad combination, continus seems to be sensitive to juglone. (Just as a note: at the same distance to the walnut, there were already a fig, a magnolia, and even a lilac - all seem to be doing just fine.) I'm going to try again with another smokebush in another location, to see if I can kill that one off as well.