Before and After: Pruning the Rosemary

Right plant, right place; surely you have heard the adage - meaning make sure the plant you want will get the conditions and room it needs to perform its best. Honestly, I live by this old adage, as it's not so simple to undo mistakes or to re-arrange plants in a large garden. Plants typically have one shot here at Chickadee Gardens so I'd best do it right the first time which means lots of researching unfamiliar plants. But, when I've done my homework and planted and waited for a plant to do its thing -- and when said plant becomes a key element in my garden and it decides to go feral -- it's time for some serious re-thinking.

In 2017, I was looking for evergreen groundcovers for this hot and dry location at the edge of the labyrinth garden. The point was to have them spill over the edge down towards the gravel path. I had seen beautiful creeping rosemary in similar situations, so that became the plant of choice. I bought a flat of 4" pots of Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Huntington Carpet’ - a plant that is supposed to grow to about a foot tall and 4 - 8' wide as a low, prostrate shrub . Here's what it looked like last weekend:

That is more like 3' tall, and for the record, took a long time to actually drape down as it is supposed to.

Here it is looking at the other side. In all, nine were planted along this edge in hopes that it would drape down gracefully and cover the edge of the bed that was left as bare soil.

Flash back to 2017, this is the same shot as the first one in this post. That soil, the edge of it, I wanted covered to hide the brown dirt; plants seemed the most economical choice.

 This is the same shot from a wider view later that summer. The rosemary plants are indicated by the pink circles.

A good illustration of the ugly brown soil I wanted to cover. This is the center of the bed with four or five little rosemary plants along the edge, again, barely visible.

After three years these beasts had reached epic proportions. I have wanted to chop them back for a couple of years now but was afraid that it might kill them, forcing me to start over. But every time I looked at them I realized they were getting larger and obscuring the garden behind them, not the effect I was after. I decided to go for it, to prune them pretty hard and, if they die away, so be it. It's better than the alternative, i.e., living with something I'm not in love with that really is a focal point in this part of the garden, all nine of them. I also did some investigating about pruning rosemary. It can be done successfully, so I learned, if it's done at a time that allows for at least three months before the first frost. OK, I am safely in that window of opportunity. So last Sunday morning, I went out with two freshly sharpened pairs of secateurs and spent the better part of two hours chopping away.

I was sure to not cut into brown bare wood but down to where you can still see leaves.

I will say this, it was an aromatherapy kind of a job. I should have taken a photo of the wheelbarrow full (I mean the pile was 3' tall, no kidding) of the aftermath.

Here is the after. They look a little rough, but I am hopeful they will fill in and behave.

The other end of the bed after a good haircut.

I have been hesitant to take photographs down here because it looked a little odd. Now I can see past the rosemary and appreciate the plants behind them.

There's the garden!

Let's review: Before

After

 Before

After

Before

After. Again, a little rough but at least they are no longer blocking plants.

And I can properly see Oscar, the agave.

So why did these misbehave? I really don't know. It could be that whomever propagated them took cuttings from the right plant but took upright plant material. Or, it could be my soil and location. It might not be R. o. 'Huntington Carpet' at all. Whatever the reason, it happened, as these things do. I hope I've found a happy solution, but only time will tell. If they do reject my pruning efforts and die on me, I am prepared to rip them out and start with something else, although at this point I'm not sure what that would be. What would you have done? I'm taking a big chance here because now they are officially covering the brown wall of dirt they are spilling down. If they are no longer there, it will be a huge hole in the garden and look crummy for a very long time. It's a chance I'm willing to take.

That's a wrap for this week at Chickadee Gardens. As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting, we love hearing from you! Happy gardening!