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Forsythias, Cont...
Then I'm apt to hear,“It's too big,
it's out of control, it's gone crazy,” when actually it's just
grown up. The initial reaction is to cut back the so-called overgrown
shrub (and make it into a tidy globe too). Next year this results
in an upsurge of straight, ugly, even-wilder shoots arising from
the end of each cut topics (the common result of non-selective heading).
If you know something about pruning, you might selectively head-back
branches to nice laterals (side branches) or remove a quarter to a
third of the canes (cutting them to the ground) each year. You will
maintain the natural fan, fountain or vase shape of a forsythia and
stop it from continuing up to twelve to fifteen feet tall and eighteen
feet wide. But you will not, trust me, be able to keep a mature plant
under eight feet tall. It's just too much work. The harder you prune,
the faster it grows. In the end, you will do what was recommended in
the first place, move it to a location where it has room to live
as a grown-up.
THE TROUBLE WITH FORSYTHIAS:
Forsythias, almost as much as quinces, have a disturbing winter
silhouette. It's a mess. This untidy appearance leads to much
malpruning done in an effort to smooth out the perimeter into a globe.
The winter aspect is then a jumble of crossing twigs shaped into a
ball, followed the next season with a ton of ugly new shoots
as described above. Not much of an improvement, I'd say and
certainly too much work.
Not all shrubs have a great winter structure like a witch hazel or a
tidy perimeter like a rhody. Forsythias are sort of the Isadora Duncans
of the plant world. They want to be wild and free. Judicious thinning
will relieve some of the crossing, crowded branches, but not all.
It's just one of those plants it doesn't pay to look at too closely.
At its best, a forsythia's form looks like a vase of large,
arching feathers.
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