Hi Jenn. Yep, I'd prune. You can give your Fittonia a major haircut, down to the soil like, or halfway. Cuttings root easy. I prefer rooting in water, but soil works just as well. After cuttings root, pot in the same pop with mom for a more compact look. Toni PS. Do you pinch leaves? Pinching keeps Fittonia compact, they won't grow as spindly in winter.

A photo of what you've done so far would help. I don't recommend planting them in areas where they are on the invasives lists. Check if they are a problem in your state, and remove it if it is. The main "trunks" are easier to reach if you remove some of the side branches first. If you want to keep it, I've seen these limbed up to create some attractive small trees. I'm guessing you hacked it back, which, as you discovered, only results in a lot of new growth that looks awkward. Do a search for pruning techniques that show you how to remove entire branches back to a lateral branch to reduce size, open the interior of the plant to the light, and retain a normal branch pattern. I'm guessing that you can do some remedial pruning next winter, and gradually correct any bad pruning done in the past over a couple of years. You can remove about one third of the branches every year. P.S. This probably is the dwarf, which is a misnomer as it gets quite large.

Charleney, I'm sorry to hear about your illness and ailing roses and hope you are both better soon. First thought here is that you might not have done your roses a favor by putting coffee grounds on them. I once did that to a healthy azalea and it _suffered_ very noticeably. If you want to use coffee grounds, I'd suggest doing it only for plants in the ground where its impact would be less concentrated, and also not putting very much at all at one time on any one plant. I know I've seen threads where people rave about coffee grounds on roses, but I'd go easy, easy on that, given what I know for sure its impact was on my azalea. I may have overdone the coffee grounds thing here when I tried it; perhaps just a thin scatter thrown out once or twice a year would have caused no harm at all. Anyway, you might consider scraping off some or most of the coffee grounds if what you put there was a heavy application. Grs An Aachen will do well even without enough sun, so your overcast weather is probably not responsible for its problems. It's a little leggy with too much shade, but nothing like a one-cane thing, and still very healthy. And the cold probably doesn't account for its problems either unless your winter was a lot worse than ours was; all three of our Grüss An Aachens have been absolutely cane hardy here with temperatures down to 11, 12, 13 degrees this exceptionally cold winter. They look wonderful now and I already see at least one flower bud. I don't know what MMM clone is, but would guess that just making sure the soil has a good organic component in its composition would be all that you'd need to do if it's acidic enough. We had something like your problem happen here when a rose was planted in a spot that was elevated but not nearly enough for our low clay soil in that area of the yard, given the unusually wet year we had last year. With really wet soil starting just maybe 8-10 inches down, there's so little dirt at a level where the roses' roots can function that the rose doesn't have the strength to send up a normal number of canes. Perhaps your wet weather was a problem because the growing spot is less than ideally elevated for good drainage in wet times? If that's the problem, just getting the roses into a well-drained pot situation ought to fix them up very soon, if you don't do anything to the soil in the pot to stress the roses further. Of the two roses we had in an insufficiently elevated spot, the one ailing the most recovered quickly as soon as it was moved to a pot with nothing more than normal organic materials incorporated into the dirt. However, the one that seemed less threatened didn't get moved right away, and with one thing and another, we didn't get around to moving it until a couple of months later, after it was too late. But the one we moved quickly enough recovered beautifully and survived the winter in perfect condition. It looks wonderfully healthy now. Fingers crossed for you now that you have that good luck with yours too! Best wishes, Mary P.S. The roses are counting on the few leaves they have remaining to get the strength they need for sending out new roots; don't cut any of that growth off now! You can always trim them later, after the roses recover, if you want to shape their form then.

Your chance for blooms next year pruning now may be dependent on your weather this season...If you don't wait any longer I think you at least have a chance for buds to set in late summer in what must be a Z8 climate (?). If your azaleas are healthy you can cut them back to the desired 4' or even lower - unlike large leafed rhododendrons, azaleas have dormant buds all along their stems just under the bark and will sprout from immediately below any cut you make. If they are too tall at 6' and 4' is ideal, you may want to cut them back even lower - or be faced with another major pruning job in a few short years.