SPOTLIGHT ON

The best anti-ageing treatment for shrubs is the chop. No, I don’t mean a date with the shredder, just a programme of hard pruning that’ll work wonders.

You can spot a geriatric shrub by its thick, stiff branches and bare, woody stems that are often clad with lichen.

It’s no good thinking you can keep cutting potentially large shrubs back hard every year to make them fit a small space – all that happens is they grow like fury but don’t flower or fruit.

So treat your ‘patient’ to its first remedial pruning in winter when it is dormant.

Cut out a few of the oldest branches – the thickest, baldest, most out-of-shape ones – and take them back to within six inches of the base, or else to the junction with a thicker stem near the base.

Aim to remove no more than a quarter of the total volume in the first winter.

When new growth starts next spring, treat the plant to a good feed with fertiliser, then mulch with compost. The following winter remove another quarter of the oldest main branches and repeat feeding and mulching.

Do the same again each year and after four years you’ll have a brand new shrub with a great set of roots for nothing more than a little cosmetic surgery.