[arugula]

Last year we had the chance of polytunnel grown plants from a guy whose garden business was basically failing  . The plants had been badly neglected but we got a number of flower type things to introduce a colour other than green!

These three straggly things turned out to be Lavatera and they grew quite strongly last year, so I pruned them quite hard in the autumn because they were lanky. They've come back very strongly this year and I wonder the best way to get them to bush out some more and maybe fill in the gaps. Hard pruning again, light pruning or will I have to take cutting and get those to establish as plants in the gaps?

Your thoughts would be appreciated 

[sunshineband]

Have a look on this site, which is brilliant for pruning advice:

http://www.gardenseeker.com/pruning/pruning_shrubs-a-z.htm

It seems that cutting them back annually onto a stool (like you would buddlei) is the thing to do to keep them healthy. A bit of blood fish and bone would help them too IMHO

Hope this helps 

[arugula]

Have a look on this site, which is brilliant for pruning advice:

http://www.gardenseeker.com/pruning/pruning_shrubs-a-z.htm

Thanks sunshineband, that site looks very useful 

Lorna.

[hamstergbert]

Lavatera tends to strike very easily if you simply tear off a piece and stuff it into the ground, even quite well on onto the season.  (It therefore needs treating with caution when attempting to stick bits into a bare patch of ground 'temporarily' to dissuade felines)

You can actually induce the things to standardise but it is a load of faffing around and the bobble head is really weakly supported due to the weedy nature of 'old' wood in Lavatera.   Looks really nice though, until the wood pigeons wreck it proving the hard way that it is insufficiently robust to be used as a perch!

I had an aunt who grew a line of them and whenever she was wandering round her garden she would keep weaving the new shoots into a sort of loose hedge affair.  Very attractive, but not terribly strong from a mechanical point of view.

[Spana]

Looking at the pic i think you have two sorts there, rosea which is the darker pink and the lighter one is probably Barnsley but not sure.  Anyway, when you prune the rosea look at the bottom of the stem and cut above where you can see plenty of buds where it will shoot from, not where the buds are far apart. Sorry, I'm not that good at describing what to do.  The Barnsley, or the light ones, be a little more gentle with as they hate to be massacred and will  sometimes revert to rosea if cut too hard.  From experience, they tend to be short lived and go very brittle so dont take a lot of trouble with them.  Just enjoy them as they are and chuck them out when they go rubbishy. Some plants make better shrubs than others no matter what you do to them.

[arugula]

Thanks Hamstergbert and Spana, those are both really helpful replies and exactly the sort of advice I was after  . I don't know if you saw my little intro in the newbie section but you might get an idea of the growing conditions we contend with here. Lavatera may not be everyone's favourite, but it grows here surrounded by open fields, set 300 metres back from the Atlantic shoreline! 

[Spana]

. Lavatera may not be everyone's favourite, but it grows here surrounded by open fields, set 300 metres back from the Atlantic shoreline! 

Well theres a thing I would never have thought that of Lavatera :blink:I agree, its always best to go with the plants that grow well in the area, rather than battle with something that will never make much of a plant.
We have seem very high and steep banks that I had big plans for but nothing did well.  Now the gorse has taken over and they look wonderful

[arugula]

We have seem very high and steep banks that I had big plans for but nothing did well.  Now the gorse has taken over and they look wonderful

We tried gorse and even that wouldn't grow!