Susannah,

Pride of Barbados - Cut it as hard as you want, now's the time to do it. You can cut as much as half of the new growth if necessary.

Golden Dewdrop - Hard to keep them as a standard and truthfully, a maintenance problem that I eliminated from our garden several years ago.

Firebush - This is also a spreading bush, not much you can do besides continually cutting it into the form you desire. Again, don't be afraid to cut it hard.

Thanks! I'll get my pruners. Was the golden dewdrop a maintenance problem besides the pruning? Does it have a problem with bugs or diseases? My yard is pretty low-key, nothing fancy or heavily maintained, so I don't mind if it's kind of wild looking, so long as I can just whack it down every so often.

susannah

I cut my dwarf poinciana in half every year in Feb. Then by the summer they are 10-12 feet again.

I have a golden dew drop shrub that got huge. It always gets these bugs and webs all over it. I hate it because of that.

I got rid of my dewdrops, too. Messy, huge, and very few blooms. I think that they need to be hacked down to about a foot every year and then they will bloom nicely. Who needs the work when there are other great blues out there.

If you do have a standard and want to maintain it, I have found that you need to stay on top of the thing by basically thumbing off the new and tender green shoots as they develop. That's the easiest way rather then waiting til you have to saw off multi trunks to get it back to the single trunk.

Cassia is another one that is a lot of work to maintain as a standard.

Hmmm. My golden dewdrops have great flowers. That's really why I'd like to find out how to keep them happy, and contained.

I guess I'll just whack them down and see what happens.

Thanks for all the advice. I'm new here and pretty excited to find folks who have advice for me. At some point, I'll have learned enough to be able to offer some too.

Susannah