After flowering, if you really must. They are not normally pruned.

Ours looks after itself although we did move it once and cut it right back

I agree with above. There is NEVER a good time to prune viburnums. You'll either miss out on the flowers or the gorgeous clusters of berries many of them put out late summer. But if you have no choice, just get your shears and do it at your own convenience.

Ah well, now V. x bodnantense in any of its three forms does not actually produce any fruit, so you are not going to lose the berries by pruning after flowering.

Female versions of Viburnum Bondnantense does produce clusters of bright red berries in autumn.

http://overplanted.com/profiles/viburnum-bodnantense.php

Thankyou everyone.

Bit of extra info in the link below about pruning Viburnums - V. bodnatense is listed under deciduous and winter flowering - some illustrations showing pruning

http://www.gardenseeker.com/pruning/pruning-viburnum-deciduous-evergreen.html

you are welcome

Wonder if your varietys different, mines deciduous with sweetly smelling clusters of small creamy white flowers, the perfume carries right across the garden
No berries though......

The male plants will produce flowers also, but only female plants produce berries.

We've just the one so no berries
V tinus must be self fertile as that sets seed?

Pam, just to clarify - Viburnum bodnatense is not divided between male and female plants - the flowers are hermaphrodite, like many Viburnums, but are not self fertile, which means you need more than one if you want berries, as the link below confirms:

http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Viburnum+x+bodnantense

One next door would do though ... as for V. tinus, not sure whether that's monoecious or hermaphrodite, but it does appear to be self fertile. The Viburnum that definitely has separate male and female plants (dioecious) is V. davidii, so if you want berries on that, you need one male and a female - though one male does for up to five females. That's if you can find one labelled as male or female at point of sale anyway!

All I can say is that we have all three forms of bodnantense and there are others within bee flight and there has never been a berry on any of them. So Dawn, Charles Lamont and the other one here must all be non-compatible.

Well that's interesting Owdboggy - its quite hard to get definitive information about which forms pollinate each other, just generally says you need two. As for V. tinus, I'm still not sure whether its self fertile or readily pollinated by other V. tinus simply because there are so many of this particular variety in the landscape anyway. Would be interesting to find out how many people on here grow bodnantense and how many of them actually get berries...

x bodnantense Deben is the third one. They all flower around the same time for us and we have a lot of bees about too!

You'd think they'd pollinate each other - and where you are, its unlikely to be shortage of water after fertilisation causing a problem, I'd have thought, though its not impossible - but not every year. Course, we always have to remember that plants don't read books;-))

Mine never has berries and sounds like yours Pamg. I like the sweet-scented flowers which are now coming to an end and will prune it as it is so tall and the flowers are all high on the small tree. Thanks for the useful link Bamboo.

I wonder if its because it flowers so early and gets frosted....like my pear in late frost years ?

Now that, Pam, is a very good point... obviously I'm down south, where late frosts are a little less likely, but actually, I've never once come across any garden with this shrub in it, in all my years of doing other people's gardens, so I don't know if they berry down here. The one I find all the time is the terribly boring Viburnum tinus (boring to me anyway) and they're always riddled with Viburnum beetle...

I hand polite my viburnums with a small paint brush. For berry production, you definitely need to find the suitable companion specific to your cultivar. If your shrubs bloom at different times, shake off some pollen into a plastic ziploc baggie and refrigerate until the companion plant blooms.. Cross pollinating drastically increases berry production. A good reliable source of information is the 'botanical gardens' in your area. You can see my success in my "Berry Blog."

http://www.growsonyou.com/bathgate/blog/29198-my-very-berry-blog

We dug our V tinus out for just that problem Bamboo......

Thanks for the info Bathgate, not sure I'll bother, the cotoneasters,rowans and pyracantha do well enough I think

You're welcome Pam. My viburnums are anchors in my garden. I hope you reconsider maybe with some of the newer, more reliable cultivars.

Asked at Bodnant Gardens where x bodnantense originated and they have never seen berries on theirs either.

Do you know if they prune theirs regularly, Owdboggy?

Never asked, but we have never pruned ours.
The Viburnum book does say they have red berries, but very sparsely and infrequently.
It bothers me in that they are hybrids and there is only one of each. All right they are split into millions of them, but they are all the same plant, so how can there be a male and female form?
I wonder if berries are produced when one of the parents is nearby?

There aren't male and female forms of bodnantense, Owdboggy, they're hermaphrodite, see my answer higher up to Pamg - the only one that has female and male plants is V. davidii

I guess they just don't set seed here for whatever reasons......

I think we've enough trees and shrubs Bathgate, not that we're running out of space just the energy to care for it all

V dawn is very old and survived a severe cutting back and move over 30 years ago
the perfume is still a delight and unexpected amongst mostly deciduous trees

I know they are Bamboo, but if they are self infertile and they are all the same plant then pollen from one ought to be exactly the same genetic make up and still not capable of pollination. Or have I got this totally wrong?
Perhaps the three different forms can pollinate each other?

Pass, don't know, but it seems more than likely to me that they would/should... but Pam's point about the flowers possibly being caught by late cold weather, especially in the north, might mean they don't stick around long enough to be fertilised, hence no berries...

No lovely williams pears or golden gage plums last year for just that reason ?

Such an abundance of knowledge on this site!!!!