"im thinking you have years to think about it.. as anything i got from a source such as this.. or from arborday .. lol ... are mere twigs ..." Yes they are, covered in leaves Lol. "I said it sort of defeats the purpose because if you remove all the branches for the first several feet, you've reduced the number of flowers dramatically." Yes, I don't only have the standards, I have several others that I will just let grow into regular shrubs. The standards will be more of an experiment, and if they fail I can knock them down to several inches tall and move them, replacing them with a different upright shrub. "The link to the Van Meuwen website shows one of their typically manipulated pictures. I wouldn't trust any images on their site. They get very poor reviews. Basically, I don't believe their 'standard' is a true depiction." Thanks, I will remember this for future reference. I realized that it didn't look entirely realistic (with that trunk it would break way too easily).

Spiraeas are incredibly tough, durable plants. As one member who frequents these forums likes to point out, you can drive over them with a truck and they will rebound and regrow promptly :-) Exercise that guarantee and have them replaced (although I would wait until later in the season - now is NOT a good time for planting!). I am not sure what is the issue with your current ones but water would be at the top of my list. First, they will need much more water to get established than the juniper in the background. And second, if the rootball was not properly hydrated before planting, it is extremely difficult to rewet or hydrate properly once in the ground, despite how frequently you may be watering.

No need to look for buds as the plant back-buds profusely after being pruned back hard; and, since it blooms on new growth, no need to worry about a hard pruning depriving you of blooms for an entire growth cycle. Something I wrote about how plants age vs how animals age, and why cutting a plant back hard rejuvenates it: We tend to think of the age of plants in the same manner we think of age of age in humans or animals, chronologically. We, like plants, go through several life stages - embryonic, juvenile, adolescent (intermediate in plants), and mature, are human stages roughly mirrored in plants. Where we vary greatly is in the way our cells age. In animals, body cells all mature at approximately the same speed. Plants grow by consecutive divisions of cells at the growing points (meristems), so their various parts are different ages (the top of the plant, or the ends of branches and stems are younger than the basal (lowest part, just above roots) portions, chronologically, but there is another way of aging plants. The ontogenetic age of plants is related to how many times a cell has to divide to make that particular portion of tissue. Basically, the closer the tissue is to the roots the younger it is ontogenetically, even though chronologically, it is the oldest. Why is this important & how does it apply to rejuvenation? Dormant buds retain the ontogenetic age at which they were formed & retain the same vigor as well. When numerous stems/branches are pruned back hard, production of a hormone (auxin) that suppressed the growth of the dormant juvenile (and very vigorous) buds is greatly diminished. When he removed the source of the hormone (primarily the growing tips of the stems) the dearth of auxin causes another hormone (cytokinin - an antagonist to auxin) to become dominant, which activates the dormant buds nearer the roots which retained the vigorous growth characteristics of a juvenile plant, causing the plant to respond with what is actually vigorous juvenile growth. Those of you who are familiar with rejuvenation pruning of multi-stemmed shrubs in the landscape are familiar with the procedure, but might not have known the actual mechanism which drives the results. It's typical for plants that grow in the shape of a flame or a pyramid standing on its point to be sparsely foliated proximal to the widest part of the plant and almost fully foliated distal to the widest part of the plant for 2 reasons. A) Apical dominance dictates the plant will spend something like 2/3 of the sun's energy it trapped by way of photosynthesis on the top 1/3 of the plant. B) The widest part of the plant shades the branches and stems proximal to that point. Al

I remember we had a winter in Chicago a while back not sure maybe four or five years ago, after which spirea goldflame plants just looked horrible. I just cut them back and removed any dead looking or brown things. They eventually came back and did just fine. I don't know what it was about the winter that cause that, but my neighbors across the street had the same problem. This year one of my two Goldflames was looking pretty scruffy but the other one was okay. Since the one that didn't look so good also was too close to something else and I wanted to move it anyway, I decided to replace it with a new one. But you don't have to replace them--just be patient. I also have three spirea Magic Carpet, which are like miniature Goldflames, and they came through the winter just fine.