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Shrubs New England Gardening The Winter Garden

How aggressively can I prune Red Twig (Red-Osier) Dogwood?

3 years ago

I have several Arctic Fire red twig dogwood shrubs. They have gotten old and so I would like to prune them to trigger some new growth. I've read that I should take off no more than 1/3 of the shrub at a time. Have you pruned more aggressively with success? The cultivar "Arctic Fire" is supposed to be Cornus Stolinifera but I have not seen much spreading .

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Comments (5)

floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
3 years ago
Very. The whole lot can be cut to the ground regularly. That’s how you get a good display of red twigs. The one third idea doesn't apply to this kind of shrub grown for its new stems and is only a rule of thumb to stop the inexperienced wreaking havoc anyway.
teuth
3 years ago
Great article about hard pruning shrubs, including shrubby dogwoods: https://hayefield.com/2011/03/27/cut-back-shrubs/
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My experience with red osier is that it can take a trimming anytime. I have trimmed some twice a year. To prune properly, take out branches to the ground, do not trim the ends. If you feel you must trim a branch to make it shorter, prune back to a natural fork. Red Osier is, by nature, a sprawling shrub 6 to 8ft high and 4 to 6 ft wide. If they are growing into each other, you may have planted them too close together so will need to thin them out by removing some: aim to have the individual plants spaced 3-4 ft apart. If you do not want plants that are 6-8ft tall, you will have a constant pruning job and should consider replacing them with a different shrub.
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For what it's worth -- I have a massive amount of red twig dogwood growing on my property. The tallest is a good eight feet. A lot of it is concentrated along a natural drainage ditch that leads to a pond on my property and from that fact I conclude that it must not mind being wet and seems in fact to prefer the wet ground. But I also have some growing closer to the house on a well-drained slope. I therefore conclude that it isn't all that fussy about moisture. The very uppermost branches of my tallest red twig dogwood shrubs are just as richly blood red as the rest of the shrub. I could just be fortunate in the strain I have growing here though. This shrub is also well loved by birds; they strip the berries as soon as they ripen. A warning -- it does get very shaggy and will need a good hard pruning every year but in my opinion this is only for the purpose of having it appear to be well maintained and not for any other particular reason that I have found. Oh -- and it is extremely easy to propogate. In early spring (April) when the soil is mushy I just chop off a foot or two and put it in the ground where I want it to grow next. No rooting hormone is required for it to succeed wherever I put it.
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jackbe1
Original Author
3 years ago
Thank you Teuth and floral_UK!

I really like the article Teuth provided a link to. Great photos and commentary. I pruned my arctic fire red twig shrubs heavily in the fall. I will have to remember to fertilize them in the spring. They are growing in a bed of pachysandra and the pachysandra is too vigorous.
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years ago
there is a thing called rejuvenation pruning ... where you remove 1/3 of the plant to about 6 inches ... once per year ... thereby keeping the shrub young and smaller ...

you do NOT remove one third of the canopy ... at height .... like a bad haircut ...

that said.. i agree with flora.. but my term is.. run it over with the truck shrub ... if you can figure out how to kill this thing ... let me know.. and ill stop running mine over with the truck every now and then ..

do whatever you want.. and if you dont like what you end up with.. do it again .. and again ... and again ...

since you are in new england ... and im thinking colder short season NE ... then you wont get as much regrowth in one summer ... as warmer longer season climes ... but dont worry.. it will be soon enough.. you are looking at while sitting in in your truck thinking.. i need to teach that thing a lesson ... lol ..

ken
pennlake
3 years ago
I use a lot of stems for the winter decoration and prefer more than one year old stems for size. So I basically do the 1/3 method and works great. Plus, some of these dogwoods serve as screening so if I were to cut them short every year I'd have to wait for them to come back up to the height I need instead of providing the instant screen once it leafs out.

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