Hello and welcome to Goy M1957

Sorry cant help you as I never prune mine back.

Don't prune mine either...

We were at Bodnant Gardens the other day and they have pruned some of theirs back to stumps which were re-growing nicely, so I guess you can prune them. Sadly they do not survive here, too much lime mortar in the soil.

You can prune Pieris and quite hard too. I used to prune a couple of customers shrubs every summer, one to tidy, the other to control. And they always grew back to be pruned the following year. But it is advisable to prune it in winter. I know some pieris come with labels of don't prune, but that should have been translated to not necessary unless required.

I had to prune one of mine almost to the ground after very severe frost damage two winters ago. It's now three feet tall again and quite happy.

Actually, I rather disagree with 2ndhand on this - the time to prune your pieris is now, after the flowers are done. If you cut it back by a third, though, be sure to give a good feed of a general purpose fertilizer, something like Growmore raked or turned into the soil at the base.

hi folks,

thanks for all the answers....if we actually get some reasonable weather here in Manchester I will give them a bit of a haircut and see what happens.