Viburnums, for the most part, have stems that go straight up and side-branches at 90° angles. They alternate between shooting straight up and branching out, resulting in a sort of layer cake look. When they are blooming, it’s like a layer cake with icing. (Usually a broad cake, but with certain varieties a very narrow one.) Sometimes, however, they forget about the branching out part and just shoot straight up, and when that happens with only a few stems it does give the shrub a rather odd look.
I’ve got one viburnum I’ve been looking after for years that tends to do this, and each year I cut back the errant stems. Obviously the shrub and I have different ideas of what its natural shape should be. Here it is just as the blooms are fading. Fortunately, my camera couldn’t focus on anything so delicate, so the blooms don’t look past their peak – just out of focus.
And here is the latest round of hair cuts.
Starting of course with the before look, plus the requisite close – up.
With the back-lighting it is hard to see those errant branches, but trust me they are there. Just to prove it – here’s after.
And here is the close-up. Not much different here as this was not a major pruning – just a wee tidy up. 
Now for something completely different. This one is a ‘Snowball’ Viburnum – not the most useful designation I must admit. I checked my reference books and there are at least three varieties that are called ‘Snowball’. At any rate, ‘Sn
owball’s’ or at least this one, are far more interested in growing up than anything else, which makes them good for tighter spaces. The difficulty with this one was that it hadn’t been pruned in a long time and had gotten a little leggy and very disease prone. A close-up of the base will give you a better idea, since from a distance, it looks just fine.
The shrub, as you can see close-up had started sending up numerous suckers, while the main stems got really long and lanky. Normally one would want to encourage any growth lower down. However, I also had to contend with insect infestations which were easiest to deal with by pruning off the worst affected areas. Annoyingly, those were often lower down then new, healthy growth.
As you can see, I got rid of a lot of the suckers and anything that was trying to spread out into the patio stones (on one side) or the lawn (on the other). I then cut back the top a fair bit to try and get the plant to bush out a little bit.
I’m just doing a thumbnail of this after shot as it is from the same angle as the one above and so really shows the change in height, but I think t
his next photo gives a much better idea of how the shrub looks overall. Normally, I would have waited until it had finished blooming to prune it, the way I did with the first Viburnum in this entry, but sometimes you just have to prune when you can. Hopefully, with a little TLC this shrub will be better able to cope with the various aphids and leaf curls that were attacking it this spring.
pruningdiaries 