Many moons ago I treated myself to two cornus Midwinter Fire - one for the front garden and one for the rear. Boith settled in well and grew happily but, after a couple of winters I realised that the one at the rear needed to be relocated to a sunnier spot for its stems to glow their best in winter sun. It was quite large by this time so I enlisted the help of OH to dig it up and replant at the other end of the border where it has also done well and looks glorious in low winter sun.
However, we must have missed a bit of root or three because it regrew, with a vengeance, in its original site. Yesterday we again dug it up and I now have a thicket of 8 shrubs planted in a vacant, newly cleared spot in my "woodland" corner where they can spread and glow to their hearts' content. They already look good and should be happy as there are also green, red and mahognay stemmed cornuses over there.
I also have 10 smaller plants potted up to grow on and swap, sell for charity or give away.
OH has dug over their original spot and, I trust, has removed any remaining bits of root! I'll be out checking when I plant the last of the spring bulbs.
You can have too much of a good thing.
Don't you believe it. We have some coming up over 3 metres from where we removed the original plant, three times!
Oh dear ...and I,m nurturing a tiny cutting of this up in my greenhouse ::)
I had this in a previous garden - it was a relief when I moved!!!! ;)
" Midwinter Fire " is beautiful ! Isn,t that the one with all the colours on one plant ?
Yes, flame like. I have a green stemmed version which is also suckering its way through a deeper part of the woodland corner but I suspect that's more of a quest for light than general thuggery as the other shrubs and trees have grown up and now cast shade below.
Blimey - ours took ages to get going in our woodland patch where we'd quite like them to go nuts. In addition to being an awesome looker, midwinter fire is a selection of our native dogwood (unlike most other colour-stemmed dogwoods) so I have a real soft spot for it.
I hope ours starts to behave like that cos I've got an ornamental wildlife hedgerow that'd look awesome with some of that mixed in.
My soil is naturally very fertile and anything that survives winter does tend to do well but the woodland soil has had nowhere near as much compost and stuff added. Maybe you should try giving yours a good mulch of compost or manure once spring gets under way and plants start to burgeon and can take advantage of all the extra goodies. Doing it now may just lead to the goodies being leached away in winter rains.
The Midwinter Fire at the front has suckered too but nowhere near as much, but then it's on a heavier soil and hasn't been pampered.