[KingEdward]

hi all,anyone pruned these before? how hard back can i cut and if i can when can i do it?  ideally i'd like to move them but the pieris is 9-10 foot high.i want to go back to a flower garden and dont really want to kill them off.

[catllar]

I had a huge pieris once (about 10ft tall and as wide) which was decimated by the 87(?) hurricane. It was a case of do or die, so I did and it didn't (die) I cut out all the really bad stuff and then in the spring I gave it a good feed and then tidied it up after it'd finished flowering. No problem. The rhodos suffered the same fate and whilst we lost a lot of flower that year they soon bounced back and sprouted from the bottom. Hope this helps.

[KingEdward]

thanks for the reply,yes but i think i'll remove it completely and replant elsewhere and hopefully flourish.

[catllar]

good luck with that - don't plant deep though, they hate that.

[sunshineband]

It's a good time in the year to move pieris or rhodis, but please remember that they will need water if there is a dry spell, as they will continue to lose water through their leaves.

They do respond well to pruning, as Catlar said, and can be reshaped easily to look good.