Pay no attention to the above remark (which doesn't really make much sense anyway). Confetti and Kaleidoscope are just different variegated cultivars of the same plants, so close enough in habit and size and growth as to be almost interchangeable. You can prune your abelia now if you like but I would still advise against shearing it. It will not want to stay sheared - that's not the way the plant grows - and you will be doing this endlessly. Just continue to cut back the long, shooting branches that appear from time to time. Confetti gets a bit larger than Kaleidoscope so if too large, you might want to consider replacing with a smaller form. You can hard prune but avoid lopping everything off at the same height. And wait until late winter or early spring for that severe an approach. Try a rejuvenation program instead....similar to the instructions offered here: 3 Prune abelia to maintain size and shape beginning in its third growing season. Select the three longest, thickest interior stems and snip them off near ground level. Continue pruning stems selected in a random, natural-looking pattern until you have removed up to one-third of the plant. To the extent possible, make the cuts on the interior of the shrub so that the pruning is not readily obvious. 4 Rehabilitate a badly overgrown abelia with drastic pruning if the alternative is removing the shrub. Cut all stems to the ground in late winter before new spring growth begins. Abelia will generally accept severe pruning and regain its normal height within several years. btw, the fully green shoots are reversions back to the original plant. Many variegated plants will do this. You should remove those as soon as you see them appear. Sunset zones are completely different from the USDA zones and measure different conditions. The Sunset zones are far more detailed.

Normal extension growths of shrubs that elevate themselves in this manner aren't "water shoots". They become seen as water shoots in the context of trying to maintain non-dwarf abelias as short dense meatballs or hummocks. An outlet here had larger pots of this cultivar on display this year that were clearly showing it produces the normal tall or tallish arching and open habit and is not a low dense dwarf, once it takes off. Much stock of various kinds of shrubs is sheared or at least headed back by growers during the production phase and represented as dwarf or low growing during this time of shrinking lots, just as so many more recently introduced shade and flowering tree cultivars that do not grow in a significantly aberrant looking manner are depicted as having quite small mature sizes. Ironically, grafting on seedling root-stocks of normal vigor and other methods used to generate quantities of stock as quickly as possible results in propagules that are faster- and larger-growing even when the original seedling or branch mutation was in fact a compact dwarf. It is not hard to find specimens at outlets that are approaching or as big as the mature or even ultimate size claimed on the labels or signs produced to sell them, yet did not spend decades at the wholesale nursery before being sent out. 5 gallon+ stock of fast-growing items like abelias may only be a few years old - the more often the producers finish a crop, empty a field or building the more money they make off that piece of ground.

That looks like what HH describes when he sees a plant that is suffering from significant root competition. Dig it up and see if you have a lot of competing roots to pull out of it. I don't think what you are seeing is a result of the plants genetics, but rather an environmental issue. Steve

Another recommendation, fwiw... A small hosta 'Lakeside Cupcake' - do you have this one? It has some similarity to High Society as far as substance goes, but is much more vigorous, and the yellow centre turns creamy white depending on sun exposure. Takes to sun well here (zone 5) and gained 6 eyes in addition to the 5 it had last year. L. CC on right...minis BME and PBox, to left of it. The yellow one top centre is English Sunrise - a superb small hosta related to June. I have it planted there since 2012 - it is one of my favourites:. Slug-proof, sun-proof till 1:30 (my zone) fool-proof, lol. Lakeside Cup Cake should appear almost twice as large as the above pic I would guess.