Q. I have a 10-year-old camellia tree that is growing out of control. It is located in the West corner of the house and gets a lot of western sun. I trimmed just the top last year and this year cut back to the trunk some of the lower branches. It is located next to my dining room window and don’t want it to block the view completely. It blooms greatly. How much can I trim it back and when? Do I have to trim it every year since it seems to like my trimming? Thank you, Patricia Stolp – Spanaway, WA
A. Well I don’t know how big your dining room window is but your camellia will be wanting to be a minimum of 8 feet tall and a little more than half as wide. That is a minimum. So you may need to cut it back yearly to keep a view out of your window. Fortunately they are generally respond well to heavy pruning – rarely dying back from it. If you don’t want to loose blooms then prune them just after they finish blooming. Make what are called heading cuts (removing part of the limb) back into the interior of the shrub. Or when necessary you can perform thinning cuts as you did on the lower branches where the entire branch is removed.