One of my favourite purple/red foliage shrubs Cotinus ‘Grace’ (Smoke Bush). Today’s #oneadayplant . A lot of people struggle with how best to grow Cotinus. Not that they are difficult, but that one has a choice to make. Either to have big leaves, straight stems and an upright habit, or to have flowers, smaller leaves, a domed habit and small tree size. It goes as follows, if you prune back the plant stems in March, you will get more colourful leaves approx 3-4 x the size of unpruned plants on fairly straight, upright stems. This is great for a foliage plant. If you don’t prune, you will get much less annual growth, but produce a very large, rounded shrub, which by mid-summer will have tiny flowers of a very thin network of stalks that look like Candy Floss or Puffs of Smoke (hence common name). So pick a habit and stick with it. Or not, you could prune every three or so years to maintain a manageable size and get the ‘smoke’ for two of those years. Best advice, if you have the space is to plant three plants together and either rotate your coppicing to one or two of those plants each year, or to leave the one at the back to group to grow up and flower and the two at the front can be cut back each year for huge foliage. You could in theory do this on a single plant too; part pruning and part leaving, but I suspect it would look rubbish more years than not. . Grace is not the best flowerer of the group and has naturally larger leaves, so it is a good plant to grow if all you are looking for is foliage. Cut back to 30cm or so in March and watch it grow! Plant somewhere where the sun in autumn will shine through the leaves before they fall off. Glorious! . Doesn’t enjoy being too wet around the roots. Similarly, if pot grown, or a new plant in the ground, don’t let it dry out as the leaves will shrivel and fall. . #red #purple #cotinus #cotinusgrace #foliage #smoke #smokebush #shrub #smalltree #pruning #coppice #sky #sun #summer #deciduous #iplantsman #garden #gardening #plantingdesign #gardeningguru #gardenista #gardeningtips #gardeningadvice #plants #plant #maintenance 🄲🄾🅃🄸🄽🅄🅂 🄶🅁🄰🄲🄴 (at Crowborough, East Sussex) https://www.instagram.com/p/CE3h_fpg86N/?igshid=1rc2w7jjlu9lz
