When do I cut back dogwood for its winter stems?

Dogwoods, coloured willows and one or two other shrubs are grown entirely for the colour of their young stems, which is brightest on wood made in the last season and fades to dull brown as it ages. That single fact drives the whole management: you cut the plant to the ground annually, it regrows completely in one season, and the display renews itself. The technique is called coppicing, or stooling.

What you'll need

• Loppers
• Secateurs
• Pruning saw for old stools
• Gloves
• Compost or well-rotted manure
• General fertiliser (optional)

Step by step

1. Wait until late winter or very early spring.February to March. The whole point of the plant is the winter display, so cutting in autumn throws it away. Cut just before the buds break — the plant then puts all its energy straight into the new stems.
2. Cut every stem to 50 to 75mm above ground.Just above a pair of buds. Over the years the base builds into a low knuckled stool, which is exactly what you want. Cut cleanly; ragged crushed cuts die back into the stool.
3. Feed and mulch immediately.You are asking the plant to produce a metre or more of growth in one season from nothing. A general fertiliser and a thick mulch of compost or well-rotted manure over the stool makes a marked difference to the vigour and the colour.
4. Water in the first summer after a hard cut if it is dry.A newly coppiced stool has a full root system and no leaves, and it will push hard. Drought at that point produces short weak stems and poor colour.
5. Use the one-third rotation where you need year-round height.If the shrub is screening something or standing alone in a lawn, cut only about a third of the stems — the oldest and dullest — right to the base each year, on a three-year cycle. You keep the height and structure and still get fresh coloured stems coming through.
6. Leave a newly planted shrub alone for a year or two.Let it establish a root system first. Coppicing a plant in its first season sets it back badly. Start the annual cut once it is growing strongly.
7. Apply the same treatment to the other stem-colour shrubs.Coloured willows — Salix alba var. vitellina and the like — are coppiced identically. Rubus cockburnianus, the white-stemmed bramble, is cut to the ground annually too.
8. Use the same logic for foliage shrubs cut for leaf effect.Purple-leaved elder, Cotinus grown for leaf rather than flower, and Paulownia grown for huge leaves are all cut hard in spring for the same reason — the young growth is what you want, and you sacrifice the flowers to get it.

Tips

• Colour intensity depends on light as well as on youth. A dogwood in shade produces duller stems whatever you do to it.
• The brightest winter stem colour develops on plants that are not over-fed with nitrogen. Feed for vigour after the cut, but do not force soft growth.
• Cornus grown for its flowers — the flowering dogwoods, Cornus kousa and Cornus florida — are entirely different plants and must not be coppiced. Only the stem-colour species are cut.
• Cut stems make excellent plant supports and weaving material. Save the straight ones.

Common mistakes

• Cutting in autumn to tidy up — You remove the entire winter display, which is the only reason the plant is there.
• Never cutting at all — The stems age, the colour fades to brown, and the shrub becomes a large dull thicket. Colour comes only from young wood.
• Coppicing a newly planted shrub — It has no root system to push new growth from and is badly set back or lost. Give it a season or two first.
• Coppicing a flowering dogwood — Cornus kousa and Cornus florida are grown for their flowers on established wood. Cutting them to the ground removes the plant's whole purpose and may kill it.

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