HMF says that Fourtune's Double Yellow "can be grown as a shrub". My question is, does anyone out there do that, and if so, how much maintenance does it require?

I rooted one from a gigantic bush growing in a park. I then planted it at the base of an 80 ft tall, 50 ft wide scarlet oak tree in my front garden. Of course, it got dappled shade in the winter, and full shade in the summer. Nonetheless, it lived up to its reputation, and by last week (about 5 years after being planted) it had grown 9 feet up the trunk of the oak tree. It bloomed every year, although the blooms were small. I was happily envisioning it eventually growing into the canopy of that tree, where there was more light.

Fast forward - for reasons I will not go into here, in 2 weeks we are going to have to take down that tree (6 different arborists - I kept calling new ones hoping for a different answer - say it is rotten and is a danger to our next door neighbor's house).

So, 4 days ago I cut the FDY down to about 2 1/2 feet tall, and my marvelous DH dug it up - he did a great job, and got a very large root ball, which we managed to put into a very large pot. It is doing fine - no wilting or anything.

My dilema is where to re-plant it. If it can be grown as a shrub, I might plant it back in the front garden, where there will now be mostly full sun. However, if it really must climb, or make a mound 25 feet across, it cannot go there. We do have an area of our garden which has a mature privet tree, and several 80 year old gigantic (10-15 feet tall and at least 15 feet wide) shrubs of various sorts. We could plant it in a clearing at the bottom of the privet tree where my oldest (80 - 100 years?) Anna Olivier just died (from old age and what looked like downy mildew). It could then climb up the tree, the top of the canopy of the large shrubs, etc. I now know it will grow in partial shade, and I am pretty certain it would do fine there, and make an amazing display. However, I really want to know what my options are - can I keep it as a shrub in a more visible part of the garden, or not?

So, if anyone grows it that way, or has an opinion about that, I would really appreciate your input. Thanks-

Jackie