Hi all Hope I'm posting in the right area.. We have a photinia which looks more like a large tree than a shrub now - it's about 20feet tall and widely spread, with leaves only at the top branches. It is in prime real estate in our backyard, and I don't like how it looks so what I'm wondering is: Is it possible to prune it back down to shrub size (realizing the pruning and regrowth will take several years) Or should we just cut it down and replace it (with what I would prefer, a dogwood) Thanks! (I have many more remedial pruning questions for other plants in our overgrown gardens but I'll pace myself!)
If it is a Photinia serratifolia in decent shape it might be a shame to cut it down. This is one of the few, lasting (more or less fully hardy) broad-leaved evergreen trees for this region, and is not particularly abundant. If it is instead a P. x fraseri these are all over the place, do not make as good a quality of tree structure (some trained in early years into tree shapes are the exceptions to the usual low forking) and are now being decimated by leaf diseases anyway.
It is a fraseri, and it had a bad leaf disease last year. Now that all the ugly leaves have mostly fallen, and the new red leaves are growing in it doesn't look so bad (sill way too big of course) - so it might live to see another year but I think in the end it will be replaced. Thanks for the input!
