Vel, Yes you will need to cut back and mulch again. I just planted my first on in ground this year. The rest of mine I grow in pots and bring in the garage for the winter. The pieces that you cut off will root easily so you can share with your friends. You don't have to cut it back until it frost. Now that it has cooled off a bit mine are blooming better than ever.

Mary

I have had mixed results leaving them in the ground in Nashville. It depends a lot on your particular micro climate and soil conditions. (If the soil stays too damp in the winter you'll loose them.)

Also, even if left in the ground they have to grow to full size before blooming. I get blooms in late May, early June and have them all summer long. I plant mine in 3-gallon buckets with holes drilled in the sides to let the roots out. Just before frost (yes, BEFORE) I trim them back to look much like a set of antlers and lift them up and store them in my basement over the winter. Watering a little now and then to keep them alive but dormant. In the spring they go back outside and already have 80-90% of their growth already done.

I can't access my photos from work, but if you do a search in the brug forum for "drilled bucket" you should find a post I made some time ago over there.

Ah. Better yet, here is a post in this forum by my sister and I that was made a couple of years ago. Hope this helps!

By the way, if you are coming to the Middle TN Plant Swap on Oct. 18th I'll have a bunch of cuttings.

I have bought 3 burg seedlings 2007 by august that year I had plants 4-5 feet tall and goobs of blooms,yellow,pink
and white. all were in 5gal. pots. last oct. I planted them in the ground mulched them well,all survied,came up good,but so far only the pink has bloomed with 6 blooms
and its oct8 they are as tall as last year but no blooms.
what happened? what should I do this fall.
THANK YOU PAT L.

Pat,

See the post I referred to above. Brugs (not burgs) only bloom after making the Y's where the initial stalks start to fork. Leaving them in the ground in your zone is iffy at best. And since ALL of the tops will die back, you have to do all that growing again before they can bloom. My mom lives much farther south than I do and she has several that come back every year. They get huge, but they only get blooms late in the summer/fall.

And by the way, getting 4-5ft plants from seedlings is pretty impressive. Sure they weren't cuttings?

Lifting the root ball and the main stalk(s) after trimming them back allows you to keep the major portion of their growth over the winter. Store them in a cool (45+) dark place and water them only sparingly over the winter. They will loose all their leaves so only leave a few when you take them up to allow for respiration as they go dormant.

The following spring they will start growing from the tips and make a much nicer bushy plant. If I can get mine out by the middle of April, blooms in June are not uncommon. And as usual, mine are right now hanging full of buds and blooms, waiting for first frost.

Also, if you really don't want to lift them, cut the main trunk(s) off at the ground after trimming the tops back, and stick the whole thing in a 5-gal bucket with just a couple of inches of water in it. Keep this water fresh. Likely they will start drinking it up pretty quick so it's more a matter of adding to it than having to change it out. These big stalks will root just like a smaller cutting. Planting those out the following spring works just about as good as lifting the root ball.

Now all of the above will have varying degrees of success based on the variety/cultivar of the brugmanisia in question as well as your soil conditions and feeding regimen. Hope this helps.

What he said.

Some cultivars are hardier than others---for me, Frosty Pink, Charles Grimaldi, Becca Lynn, and a NOID white my mom's neighbor grew from seed come back reliably year after year, and perform well. Others, like Ecuador Pink and all the versicolors will come back, but won't perform. And some, like Butterfly, won't come back at all.

The drilled bucket method works well, and gives early flowers. Rooting the main trunks works well too, but takes a bit longer to bloom. You can also take cuttings from flowering wood and get even earlier bloom, but your plants will be much shorter.