The forsythia is a lovely bush in full bloom. Its natural habit has been described as fountainlike – it is a bush with long arching branches that are covered with bright yellow flowers in the spring.
So why on earth do people prune the hell out of their forsythias, trying to turn them into tight, tidy ballshaped bushes? If you want to do topiary, people, buy a freakin’ yew! If you want flowers in a bush-shaped bush, get an azalea! If you don’t want a gorgeous fountain of yellow to greet the spring, take the bush out, don’t try to make it something it isn’t! Owning forsythias is optional! If you don’t like them, don’t grow them!
Every spring I drive through suburbia, and every year the proportion of tortured, butchered forsythia rises. Or maybe it’s just my tolerance for this cruelty declines.
I don’t know about the forsythia in your neighborhood, but mine are so hardy that I can cut them back a couple of feet and they regain it all and more in a matter of weeks.
We have a huge wall of them behind our pool, and they grow until the walkway on the far side of the pool is unusable. At that point I walk up and down the walkway, hacking off huge swaths of forsythia with my hedge trimmer. When I’m done, I fill several trash bags with the leavings and clean up whatever fell into the pool. I wait a month or so and repeat the whole process. There’s actually a fence buried somewhere within the bushes, but you’d never know it by looking. Some day I must go to the neighbor’s side with my trimmer and give them back three feet of their property.
They are beautiful bushes, but if not controlled, they would eventually engulf our home. Oh, and why did we buy them if we wanted to prune everything? We didn’t! The previous owner did.
No, I don’t try to form them into cute shapes. I’m just trying to maintain a sort of delicate balance where they stay on their side of the line and we stay on our side.
Since March, I’ve been obsessed with the bright yellow bushy plant growing everywhere around me. I’m a biologist, and I simply do not like not knowing the names of plants and animals. But I was too embarrassed to go up to one of the plant people in my department and ask.
A few days ago, I put in “yellow woody plant” in google. And voila! I stumbled across a picture of forsynthia. Goose bumps broke out on my skin. My ignorance-induced spell was broken! And I felt so smart and pleased with myself.
Forsynthia’s are my favorite plant now, next to Phragmites.
That’s a great turn of phrase. I like the way it rolls of the tongue:
“Buy a freakin’ yew!”
“No! You buy a freakin’ yew!”
“Are you tellin’ ME to buy a freakin’ yew?!”
“Yeah. If you’re gonna tell ME to buy a freakin’ yew, then I’m gonna tell YOU to buy a freakin’ yew!”
Someone a couple of miles down the street from me has a BANK of lovely, untrimmed, gloriously bursting forsythia. I drive by it several times a week, and I just love to see the fountains of yellow!
I can’t wait until I return to Maryland - I do so miss forsythia! They grow wild in the woods behind my mother’s house - I’ll claim a bunch of cuttings and take them to our lot. In fact, I could do that now - let them get started before we start building.
I look forward to gardening again in real soil. I hate trying to maintain a garden here.
I’d have to disagree on the lilacs. They will take over the planet, if left unchecked. Forsythia do, too, but I think lilacs are worse. You can practically SEE the darn things growing.
minor7flat5 and {b]Davebear** there’s a difference between between pruning a giant unweildy bush back so that it’s a moderately sized unweildy bush and turning it into a perfect sphere.
twickster I grew up in a suburb full of globe shaped forsythia and flat topped boxwood hedges maintained by men in bermuda shorts and black socks. I didn’t know until relatively recently there was any other way for them to be. You may be happy to know that in my current suburban location the trend seems to be toward letting them spill over. Perhaps the idea will continue to catch on.
Glad to hear it, gwendee – let’s all keep our fingers crossed.
minor – I don’t have a problem with whacking away at them to keep them under control – I actually have some sympathy for the problem. (My late, not terribly lamented. Uncle Joe called them “weeds” and refused to allow them in his yard.) I’ve been trying to think of something else you could plant next to your pool if you decide (oh brave, foolish soul) to try to get rid of the forsythias. Azaleas are tidier, but they’re fairly slow-growing (I assume “blocking the view” is something you want there). There are two bushes that grow much faster – one is hibiscus, which has lovely, huge flowers June till frost – but the spent blossoms [a phrase I adore] tend to get a wee bit yucky underfoot – there would be a lot of sweeping. On the other hand, you’d be set for flowers for the ladies at any luaus you might throw.
The other suggestion would be buddleia (aka butterfly bush). Purple flowers starting late June and continuing through to frost – attracts butterflies – is somewhat fountainy, but since you cut it back practically to the ground each spring (it blooms on new wood), it doesn’t get quite as out of control as the forsythia.
I don’t see a location for you, but these I think are both good fairly far north.
There’s a lilac and a forsythia fighting it out in my front yard. The lilac is winning.
I love big swaths of wild forsythia. Individual ones, not so much. They have forsythia on the highway dividers around here, and it looks so gorgeous when it blooms.
And I got a new pruner today! I need to go cut back my butterfly bush. And prune my rosemary.
This thread is so topical for me. I need to put in foundation plantings, and I need to decide what to put in. It is about a 20 foot stretch in front of the foundation, and I need to put in compact plants to fit in with the scale of the house. It’s partial shade–but it does get a half-day of great sun. I can’t decide whether to put in a row of like plants or to mix it up. I’m considering azalea, yew, and boxwood. I had a gorgeous euonymus but it got eaten by an evil fungus, so I’m worried about putting more in.
I’d go for azaleas – I love it when there’s a combination of colors(I like the fuchsias and purples, not those wussy pinks). Also then you can put a bed in front of that and plant irises, which bloom at a similar time – purple irises in front of fuchsia azaleas, mrowr!)
Of course, if you have a brick house, that might tend to clash – I only have two azaleas, and they’re both white, and those are also pretty. I wish my yard were bigger, so I could have more. The azaleas are very tolerant of the shade, but they can get huge with a little encouragement – there are some at the Morris Arboretum here in Philly that are at least 12 foot high and 12 foot wide – they’ve got to be ancient. As I say above, these are fairly slow-growing, and thus not that hard to keep under control.
Yeah, I’m leaning toward azalea, too. I really dig boxwood in formal gardens, but mine is more informal, and yew is just… Well, I need to maximize the impact of whatever is in my tiny yard, so I don’t think yew is the right choice.
I know that there are some varieties of azalea that are bred to stay on the small side, so I’ll have to make sure to get one of those varieties. There is a white azalea that is supposed to be very good for this area, but I think I’d like something more colorful. My house is pale yellow with green shutters, and we are going to get around to painting the front door red one of these days. I worry that fuschia will clash, but I don’t care for a lot of the red azalea shades. I’ll see what they have at the nursery.
They had a lot of shrubs at Costco, but they had barely any information attached to them! Not even their projected height and spread. There was also no hardiness information. I hate that.
If you wanna prune a forsythia, do it right after the blooms fall off. Then, don’t prune again until it flowers next year. All the blooms happen on SECOND YEAR GROWTH.
