You Can Trim Your Burning Bush WAY BACK!!!

Tips, Tricks

1. Thank you, Mike! This is just the info I needed.
2. Thank you Mike. I just did this to a viburnum bruxwoodi. I can't wait to see what it looks like.
3. Get rid of it! It's an invasive species in CT
4. Can you do this with crazy large ones? We bought a house and the bushes are a story high.
5. Thanks so much, Mike! We are just about to do ours, (March 12) so we can actually get to see out our dining room windows again...I'm excited! wink My husband was nervous when I told him they could be cut right back, now here you are to say sure! Go ahead!
6. Hey Mike if you want be around to cut that bush back again you're going to have to do something about being big overgrown and the best time of season for you is right now.
7. Will it grow back if cut down to the ground?
8. Mike, you are the best. Thanks for your video. You put my mind at ease. I just have a few questions I hope you could be kind enough to answer.
   I have a smoke bush that is ancient and has never been cut back. It has multiple old trunks. What should I do with that?  Do I cut each trunk close to the ground or do I just cut back to were the thin stems grow out of the trunk near the top? The plants are at least 8' or more right now and the trunks themselves at least 4' high.
   
   I have an overgrown weeping forsythia. I removed some of the branches at ground level to thin out the shrub. Is that enough or should I wack this low to the ground?
   
   Finally,  I have numerous scrawny rhododendrons and Azaleas. Right now they are in bud and I don't want to sacrifice any flowers.  Can I use a hedge trimmer on them right after they flower? All over town I see these glorious, lush Rhododendrons and azaleas and was wondering why theirs look so much bushier than mine. Thanks for any info you can provide.
9. We cut a rose bush back to the roots with a chainsaw and now it's 5 feet tall. It won't die. No matter what, so we figure, leave it alone. You can whack roses way way back, they don't care, don't believe that nonsense. What those things back.
10. Great info, thanks :D
11. I just trimmed two of them 3 ft, they were 6 ft high, too wide, and didn't look good anyway, an insect infested them for the first time in all the years I had them and all the leaves turned a gray looking color and fell off. In the spring they should come back, get thick and be a nice size, I just hope I don't have the insect problem again, I did spay them, but it was too late, they never recovered. I still have one 8 ft tall, and another 6 ft but that height is ok where they are.
12. He's right. You can't kill the darn things. I've cut them way back in the summer and they come right back. They don't look great for a time but they come right back.
13. is burning bush considered invasive in many places nowadays?
14. I thought you should cut your forsythia bushes after it blooms? Or you'd be cutting off all the next years blooms? 
15. Big Mike's right. We cut 8 bigger (6'-7') burning bushes back by 50%-60% last fall in Seattle and we could have cut more. I'm amazed to see how they're recovering. It's now April and every cut has 2 to 6 new sprouts. I cut just above joints, so there are some multi-stubs with 10 or more sprouts. Rather than trimming like a hedge (or with a chainsaw), reach down into the plant and cut at various levels. I used a saw, loppers and hand clippers.
16. Thanks for the lesson.