Cotoneaster Pruning Tips by Cass Turnbull

Home , Cotoneaster, Cotoneaster horizontalis

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New gardeners are apt to make their first and most embarrassing phonetic faux pas when they mis-pronounce cotoneasters, as cotton-easters. Ka-tone- ee-ass-ters, is correct.

New pruners also pronounce loppers, l-oh-purs (rhymes with dopers), instead of correctly as lop-pers which rhymes with toppers.

Like most plant species, cotoneasters come in a variety of sizes, from the impressive C. frigidus `Cornubia', almost a tree at twenty feet, to the tiny- leafed C. microphyllus, bred for people who like cute buns. I'm partial to the ubiquitous, but highly underrated C. horizontalis commonly called fish-bone, herringbone or rock spray cotoneaster. I think it has great architectural qualities. Planted against a fence or chimney, it espaliers itself in a tower of fans. It reminds me of the ice feathers that form on your windshield this time of year, too.

espalier - front view side view

It's been so long since I took plant ID that I get my mid-sized cotoneasters mixed up. I think it's the C. lacteus that I prefer to C. franchetii. I find franchetii too spiky and stiff, though other people like the grayish cast of the leaves, which have even whiter undersides. I like the floppier, larger leafed C. lacteus, or is it parneyii? Latin names — I lose more of them every year. I'm surprised I can't actually see them falling out of my ears. And curse that secret society of heartless taxonomical dictators who change plant names. Did you know that common garden `mums' (chrysanthemums) are now really Dendranthema (will they be called common garden

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`ma's'?) There ought to be a law.

What cotoneasters share in common is their nice display of red to orange berries and their arching branch pattern. They like dry soils and sun, but are generally tolerant of all kinds of abuse and neglect. They get around well on their own, spread by hungry birds who eat the berries in late winter when the finer fare is gone. One is apt to find a lone cotoneaster growing in the cracks of a sidewalk or sprouting out of the middle of a field of junipers. Such shrubs are called “volunteers”.

Although I like cotoneasters, I admit that (on the great unspoken horticultural plant-status scale) they rate rather low. I know this because of what I said when I went on a consultation with another professional gardener. We went over her client's yard together where many plants had been mal-pruned, mostly sheared into balls. She asked what to do about the sheared cotoneaster and the sheared evergreen azalea. I told her that it wasn't worth the effort to rehab the cotoneaster (a difficult and lengthy process). “Just dig it out.” I moved on to show her how to un-shear the azalea (with relatively rapid, good results).

THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE

The most common pruning mistake people make is to shear cotoneasters (and everything else for that matter.) Actually, cotoneasters fit the criteria for plants that are good as formal hedges (small-leafed, evergreen and tough) and can be used as such, which is to say topiaried or sheared into continuous hedges. But most selective pruners express a more than average disgust when they see cotoneaster balls because such pruning subverts the best feature of these plants — their arching branch pattern. And also, because once cotoneasters are sheared, the future results are startlingly horrid. I know of no other plant that grows back from heading cuts with as many straight shoots. A picture of a re-grown, sheared cotoneaster at the PlantAmnesty educational booth is titled, WILD THING.

THE MOST COMMON Heading cuts make it they will cause ugly MISTAKE: look tidier for now, regrowth, using non-selective but . . . making it twice as unkept heading cuts later. to make the plant smaller...

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Near my home in beautiful upper Ballard, I have examples of all three pruning techniques. One apartment complex sports a silly “row of soldiers”— all cotoneasters sheared into tight globes. Nearer my house is a condo with a steep rockery that a hardworking, yet wholly ignorant, grounds crew swarms over once a month to shear cotoneasters into rather pleasant looking smooth masses. It's reminiscent of some formal Japanese gardens I've seen. Between shearings, the shrubs resprout and don't look so tidy. In point of fact, the condo association is paying a lot of money to have these plants look ultra-tidy half the time, and twice as unkempt the other half of the time.

Next to it is a shorter rockery belonging to the church parking lot. It has unpruned cotoneasters spilling and arching gracefully, like a waterfall, down the rocks. Nobody ever prunes them and they look great all the time. Unfortunately grass and weeds are starting to invade, and when that happens, can the hedge- shearing motorheads be far behind?

HOW TO SHORTEN

As with most plants, I avoid trying to shorten or otherwise restrict the size of cotoneasters. If a branch actually interferes with people walking down a pathway, rubs on the house or sticks out too far into a neighboring plant, I look to see if it can be removed with a thinning cut, taking it off where it joins a larger stem or altogether, cutting it to the ground. If this is not possible, I will occasionally use a selective heading cut (see illustration). This is not necessarily the smallest cut possible along the branch. Follow the branch back from the tip trying to locate a largish side branch to cut back to. It's a difficult thing to grasp, but is the essential part of selective pruning that allows me to retain the natural grace of the branches and reduce the amount of water sprout/sucker regrowth.

SELECTIVE HEADING is the right way to shorten a branch.

This smaller cut may To make a better cut, make not be as good as a larger cut to a larger the next illustration lateral branch

In my opinion, selectively heading these or any other shrubs for all-over size control is doomed to eventual failure. The size of a shrub is determined by its species and age. Pruning really won't work to keep them small, at least not for long. And you run the risk of ruining their good looks

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by trying. Most bad pruning comes from bad planning, itself as common as dirt (soil?).

If you research the mature size of your plant in the plant encyclopedia, and there isn't enough room, by all means, TAKE IT OUT. (I rarely try transplanting cotoneasters. It's just not worth the effort since they die easily, are easy to replace, and are not considered particularly choice.) PlantAmnesty gives you permission. Correcting mistakes as soon as they are spotted is good garden policy. (But then, so is waiting to see how it goes.)

DEADWOOD

When pruning any plant, 80% of all the cuts made should be to remove deadwood — dead twigs, dead limbs and stubs. Cotoneasters, in particular, clean-up well with dead-wooding. The dead twigs are often so brittle that they can be simply brushed (crunched) out with a gloved hand. Take care to remove any stubs that might remain after the quick, brush through. What a difference! You will quickly discover that most deadwood occurs on the lower parts and inside of the shrub, where it has been shaded out. Two other plants which look particularly better after deadwooding are pines and pieris. Please make a note of it.

BOTTOM UP, INSIDE OUT

God bless George Schenk for his description in The Complete Shade Gardener of the pruning process that says, prune from the bottom up and the inside out. I remember when I started my business many years ago, my partner Betty would disappear inside shrubs, sometimes crawling into the base of them on hands and knees. I felt like asking her to stop fooling around and get to work. But as the minutes passed, and cut limbs and twigs were shoved outside the plant, the shrubs would start looking cleaner, better, and — well, more beautiful. This is the art of pruning. Most books say to remove crossing/rubbing branches and to open up the center to improve plant health, which it does. But the real reason it's done is to make your yard look better — that's the point of gardening anyway, unless you are gardening to provide wildlife habitat. In that case some tangles, brambles and deadwood are a good thing. And a heap of ugly concrete rubble is required if what you desire most is the company of a nice newt or garter snake. So, before I do any size reduction, I thin a bit, doing more at the base of the plant than elsewhere, to see if that will solve the real or perceived problem.

REPAIRING MAL-PRUNED SHRUBS

I can't actually recall spending the time and effort to restore a previously headed or sheared cotoneaster. It's too daunting, I guess. If you are a professional gardener who has taken on an over-sheared yard, it is often best to pick your battles. Refuse to re-top the dogwood or shear the pieris. A previously headed double-file viburnum may be worth three years of painstaking rehabilitative pruning. The cotoneaster, on the other hand, might just be the sacrificial shrub that someone is allowed to “sculpt” until it finally gets too big and unwieldy or develops a really bad case of web worm (they just love those tight clipped bushes, don't you know.) Then cut it

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to the ground. After three or four years you may be surprised to find it has regrown into a graceful shrub. Then sneak the hedge shears out in a Goodwill donation bag on the front porch. If you would actually like to try unshearing a cotoneaster the slow way, feel free to order the Unshearing Shrubs article from the PlantAmnesty Literature Order Form. Also, the Abelias article has good illustrations of repairing mal-pruned shrubs.

NO PRUNING

As with all shrubs and trees, cotoneasters do a pretty good job on their own. My favorite Cotoneaster horizontalis isn't pruned at all. I saw it for the first time last year, smothered in berries like a giant red bow. Next to it sat Sugar, the snow white cat. It was as pretty as a Christmas card. Season's Greetings!