this is another variety of deciduous shrubs do it's a spiraea called spiraea Renaissance it's one of the larger growing spyrius we'll be looking at some smaller shorter spire ears that are very common in the landscape a little later beautiful fall color in it isn't that gorgeous you can see even where the old blossoms were from last late spring when it bloomed and this is a new growth that it has grown from the rest of the season and actually this is laden with buds that will come out on small brackets and bloom and late spring so what would happen if I trim this right now boy in its dormant state that means you wouldn't be able to enjoy the nice flowers it's gonna produce in the spring you'll cut all the blossoms off so you want to make sure you know what kind of plant you're dealing with in this case a larger spiraea blooms on wood that was produced this year for next year's blossoms now if I wanted to contain this plant and keep it small would it be okay to wait until it blooms and then prune it back more dramatically and exactly if you want to shape the plant in fact it's a good thing to do to keep it into weight as soon as it's finished blooming and then go in and chop it back down to a good at least a foot lower than what you want it to be for the rest of the season then the rest of the season it's going to grow produce that foliage the buds will be set and you'll have a nicer blossom the following year now you mentioned this is a specific type of spirea there are many different types of spirea out there do we all share the same characteristic of blooming on old wood it's a good questions to know they don't in fact the most common varieties aspire as their smaller ones people love them because they only get about three feet high and they bloom on wood that grows every spring up to a certain point set a blossom bloom and then you trim that off in June and then they'll get another blossom later on but again they grow in wood that's growing that season let's go look at one of those and I'll show you how to trim that