Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
We manage Phormium from the outside + pulling out any brown leaves regularly (by wrapping round a bit of old broom handle!). It's not a type of plant for a major hard cut down like a Pampas Grass. I think your customer has ruined an architectural plant that needs constant attention rather than blitzing.
I suppose now that the deed has been done, you can try cutting down, but a hedge trimmer will probably get tangled up. Good luck.
I have had standards that have snapped in strong winds where is have cut them an inch from the ground and they have regrown from that.
Whatever you use to cut them, make sure it's sharp. Hedgecutters will make a mess. We previously thinned some out using a stanley knife and cut sections out right at the base.
Jakoti hand shears are the best tool for this, awesome set of hand shears..
one garden i did had about 40 of them all over 7 ft high then the beast from the east struck killed all the leaves off it took 2 of us all day to cut them back to the floor i think i ended up using a wood saw most of them did come back but it took 3 to 4 years to get back to a resonable plant put leaky pipes and mulch down for the summer
The only thing we found any good was oasis orange floristry scissors. Felco secateurs and hedge cutters don't get on with the stringy fibres in the leaves. My customers wouldn't accept 4 years for a phormium to regrow and never heard of cutting down
Thanks all for your help and input. I definitely won't use hedge trimmers then!
You don't cut phorium to the ground but for damaged / brown leaves , I pull the brown leaves out, they will grow back with the cut edge if cutting healthy leaves which is very unsightly. I put some in the woodchipper once never again , they wrap around the blades nightmare .
Cordlylines grow trunks and can be cut back to close to the ground and resprout , the frost usually does the job for you especially on the red varieties.
andrew and luke there was no other option except dig them out as they got totaly whiped out
why not remove it and replace it with a dwarf variety such as Jack Sprat? 1m in height.