Greater London, England

Chopped down Berberis growing back

Earlier this year I cut back a berberis darwinii in my front garden, virtually to ground level. I was intending to dig it out and replant with something else later in the year. The berberis was about 6ft tall and starting to look quite defoliated on the lower leaves. Generally it seemed to have gone into a decline in the last year or so.

At the time I had a lot of builder's work going on in my house and I also found it difficult to dig the shrub out as it was planted in a gap in cobblestones. So although it was chopped back to about 8 inches I never got around to digging it out. I was going to wait until the autumn and wetter weather, so I just surrounded the area with a few planters and forgot about it.

Yesterday I went out to water the planters and noticed out the stump has resprouted: in fact one new shoot was about 18 inches long. I suppose it's had a rather extreme renovation pruning.

I am happy to leave it to do its own thing if the end result will look healthy again, and the new shoots certainly do. Should I just leave it as is for the time being or give it a trim/feed? I have put some fresh homemade compost where part of the root was previously exposed.

• 23 Jul, 2013