Hebe: Big Brave Chop!

 

I am very proud of one of my ad hoc Clients: they have an overlarge Hebe, a large-leaved one, which was getting huge.

Last year, at one of my monthly visits, Mrs Client asked what could be done about it, and I said that at some point, we would have to be brave and give it a big chop, to "re-set" it: it was going to continue to grow in size, and it was getting rather sparse.

 

She looked at me with the puppy eyes - no, not the usual "oh go on, pleeeeease!" puppy eyes, but the "oh no, not the rolled up newspaper..." ones. I get this a lot.

 Clients are often, quite reasonably, worried at the prospect of doing something drastic to one of their precious plants. Unlike me, they don't do it all the time: they don't see the results, so they don't have my confidence that it will "grow back". And it's a particularly tricky situation when it's a precious plant, one which was given to them by a favoured relative (in this case) and where they don't know the cultivar, so they can't just go out and buy another one (again, in this case)...

 

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