Berberis Pruning

Hi everyone, it's Jeanette here from The Enthusiastic Gardener and today I want to tackle this shrub here. This is called a Berberis, it's a Berberis thunbergii, I don't know if I'm saying that right, a rose glow. Now it is a gorgeous gorgeous plant, obviously it's dormant at the moment so it doesn't look much at all but it's gorgeous, it's beautiful red colours and it's very gated. Now I've had this in my garden since I lived here which was 15 years ago and I believe it's been here probably since the house was here. When I first moved in it was probably about six foot high and one day in my wisdom I chopped it right down, I chopped it down to this high. I think it needs some attention, it's a tough old boot, it's been here all this time, I think it could take a hard pruning. I've been looking at YouTube videos of what to do, some people cut them right down to the ground and I think I'm going to give it a go. I believe it can survive, so we will see. So if we have a look you can see there are some new buds coming up right along the edges but there are also really really really old woody old stems, as I say it's never been pruned, never apart from the time I chopped it in half. So I think it's a good time, I am going to be brutally ruthless, as I say I've looked up YouTube videos, I feel this can handle it, there's a lot of dead wood in there, it's very very spiky, so a lot of thorns. I'm going to go for it, I'm going to cut it right down, see what happens. I do believe that it can take it, it will survive, so let's do it. So here goes, as I say it's incredibly thorny, so you have to be careful. I'm going to go right down, obviously you get the the DDDC, you take out the dead, the diseased, the damaged and the crossing, well I have everything here, everything, I'm going to go right in and prune the whole thing back. I'm going to first of all take it halfway down, just chop halfway down, just to get things out of the way. Woody old stems here, then I can see what I'm doing. So what I will do is I will speed the camera up and I will take it all down halfway and then we will have a reassess and have a look at it. So now I've got it in a more manageable, more manageable size now. What I'm going to go through, I am really really going to prune this hard. I'm going to take it down to probably about four inches the whole thing, I'm going to take out all the spindlies and you can see where I've cut all these branches are still green inside, so they're still living. I'm going to really prune it, take all the spindly ones off, as I say about four inches. I can see buds right at the bottom of these thick branches. I'm just going to go for it, rejuvenate it. I'm going to do that now. Lucy has just come to see what's going on. Hello Lucy, hello Lucy. What you can do just to tidy up the inside is get a twig, a twig like this and just scrape away, clean up the inside, give it some air. Actually that twig is not that helpful. Give it some air, clean up all the inside. Now this, I have great faith in this plant. I believe it will survive and if it doesn't, it was a good, a good test, a good way of learning and can always put something else there instead. But I have great faith in it. I've really, really brutally, brutally pruned it but you know what, I think it will be fine. There's loads of buds. I can see buds everywhere. I have faith. Faith is all you need. A little bit of mulch in the middle just to make it look nice. Get rid of those. Have to watch for these little thorny bits because of the dogs. There's a weed because of the dogs. I don't want them to get thorns in their feet. That's it. I'm going to leave it as that. Oops, that's it I think. Rejuvenated, ready for new growth. I'm pleased with that. Marvellous. We'll leave it at that. So I have indeed been very ruthless but I do believe it will survive. It's got a lot of buds. All the cuts you can see, hope you can see this, all the cuts show that the branches are all alive. So we shall see. I have great faith. I'm Jeanette. I am the Enthusiastic Gardener. I've been very enthusiastic today with this shrub but I have faith in it. I hope you can join me for more videos. I put videos out every Sunday and every Thursday so I hope you can join me. Have fun in your gardens and I will see you again very soon. Bye.