Mahonia 'Charity'

Lovely!

My friend has one trained as a tree. This year Mum Blackbird brought her chick to feed it on the blue berries. We sat under the parasol sipping wine and watching it being fed!

this is amazing, a perfect example :-) I checked to see if mine has flowers and sadly not :-(

Thankyou:-)
Aaaw how lovely Tetrarch, bet it looks lovely trained as a tree, this is planted a bit too near a pathway, OH moans about being spiked by it every time he goes down the garden,lol, but such a lovely shape don't want to cut it back and spoil it, he'll just have to curve the path out round it lol.
This just gets better every year Dawn think its been here around 7 years now, didn't do much the first couple of years just the odd flower, but lovely now:-)

Ah ! please don't show me ! mine had such a drastic hair cut a couple of months ago I'll be lucky if I have one flower :o(

Just can't bring myself to cut it Amy, probably have to soon though.

It had to be done Kathy the whole border was so overgrown , it was beginning to cover a particually nice Pieris .. .. have you ever cut into the wood of the Mahonia ? it's bright yellow !

Didn't know that Amy, no never cut this back at all yet. Know the feeling we planted a really steep slope halfway down the garden with shrubs around 8 years ago, they've grown huge had to move a lovely rose that was just being smothered by a pittosporum, hope it survives, but the pittosporums evergreen so looks good all year, just planted things too close together, didn't look that close at the time, have a ceonothus on there that must be over 10ft across.

We did the same thing Kathy , I mean planting things too close together when they were small ,we did in fact lose our Pittosporium at the end of last winter, it turned yellow after 16 years , do they have a short life , I don't know ? I hope your rose survives the move ,I hate losing plants .......

I think we all must set plants too close but when first planting the small shrubs look so lost in big spaces.

So true Dawn, going to tackle that conifer soon that I told you about, planted in totally the wrong place, have found the perfect spot for it, hope I can move it without killing it :-)

I've just found your photos/blog, Simbad. You have some lovely mature plants...must investigate your postings in depth.

I'm just in the planning stages and can fully appreciate the problem of planting too many plants/shrubs and too close together. My space won't be very large so I will have to select carefully. The Mahonia you have pictured above would, I think, be too large for my space and it does look so spectacular!

Aaaw thankyou Whistonlass, yes we planted this garden from scratch, apart from a small wooded area, just over 9 years ago now just getting to the stage were we need to cut things back or take a few out, old allotment land so things have gone a bit mad, the Mahonia isn't really fast growing but yes is quite a large plant now, such a lovely shape though, you can prune it to keep it in check, I haven't yet though.

A real beaut.....