Hi guys,

I have this plumeria that we have grown from a stick a few years ago. I've been bringing it inside each winter, and moving it back outside during the growing season (zone 7a). I'm afraid at this rate that: #1) it's going to be difficult to move in and out of our door, and #2) it's getting kind of lanky and may only get more funky looking in the near future.

The whole thing is about 4' tall from the soil at it's highest, and splits into 3 branches about 22" up. I would like it to be a little more compact, or at the very least a little more densely branchy. It has developed a bit of a scale problem recently, and I suspect that has stunted 2 out of the 3 branches. Fortunately it's not out of control, and I'm doing pretty well at controlling the scale manually at this point.

So my question is, how would you more experienced folks go about pruning this to encourage some more shapely growth? Or should I just sit back and let it do what it wants to do? In hindsight, I wish I had cut it back much earlier to get that first branching point to start lower down, but I don't think I want to do anything that drastic at this point.

Thanks for any advice,

-Dan