Some people find it hard to believe that gardens go through the same trends as the fashion industry does. Sometimes you can pick when a garden was designed by what is planted in it. For example, this plant is a diosma and it was hugely popular towards the end of the 80's and the early 90's. Alot of gardens back then contained hedges of diosma or golden diosma (which is very similar to diosma, except new leaves have a golden look to them) and large cocos palms, the shadey areas would have had a tree fern or two. Diosma still remains a popular plant today, just not as much as used to be. For that I am quite thankful as when a diosma flowers, it only flowers on the semi-hardwood growth. These are the stems of the plant that are a good couple of months old and still have the redish tinge to the thin leaf covered stems. Unfortunately people with very manicured hedges often remove this growth. So if you are too vigorous with your hedging, then your diosma wont flower. Your best bet is to only prune it about 4-6 times a year, and not prune too hard into the old hard wood. Fingers crossed you let it grow for a bit as they look quite lovely when they are given the chance to blossom, they are a mass of pink or white flowers.
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