gardening question - spirea

teriwtt
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:41:26 +0000

oh midwesterner - am glad there’s someone else on this board to commiserate with me. I feel so incredibly defeated by this winter!

I should have clarified a bit more (although all the advice is appreciated). The four spirea I have are planted between our driveway and front stoop/sidewalk to the front door, with perhaps 2 1/2-3’ of ground between those concrete slabs. First of all, I realized those shouldn’t have been planted there - it’s a small area for a shrub that likes to grow so quickly (unlike our boxwood). So every year (usually sometime in the early to mid summer) I struggle with cutting it back, but with the amount I have to cut it back so it doesn’t completely overtake the sidewalk and edge of driveway, it ends up looking very woody, and I lose a lot of the foliage on the periphery. I have to shape it into an almost rectangular shape to keep the sidewalk clear. I was thinking if I cut it back more harshly now, before new growth begins to emerge (which I’m afraid will happen by the time we return home in two weeks), then I could get a better handle on controling the size this year so that when I shape it in the summer, I won’t have to take off so much.

They’re incredibly beautiful shrubs, and I love how they change colors for the seasons, and the little pink flowers. A few years, we’ve had either geese or ducks lay eggs at the base of a shrub; unfortunately some critter inevitably gets to those eggs before they can hatch.

Calling the Chicago Botanic Garden is an excellent idea. It hadn’t even occured to me. We have master gardeners at the UICU satellite office in our county, but their hours are very limited. I knew I could get my answer quicker by posting on CC!

midwesterner - since you know what kind of winter we’ve had, I’m sure you will appreciate my concern of losing some landscaping from all the heavy snow we’ve had this year. More and more, I’m seeing damaged arborvitae as I drive around the area. Some of ours aren’t looking too great… sort of sagging in some areas, or leaning over. I don’t think there are any breaks/cracks in major branches, but I haven’t thoroughly inspected them all yet. I do see some in my neighborhood that have obvious broken branches about 1/3 from the top where the shrub just couldn’t take the weight of the snow and it cracked.

Nevermind the 6" iceberg we had at the end of our driveway where the snow plows would pile it up after we’d shoveled At least it finally melted (for the most part) on Sunday. The mail delivery truck still has a huge frozen snow drift it has to navigate up to get close enough to our mailbox to put mail in.