This is not a picture of Annette; at least she’s not the subject. The lilac bush is. The plant had been shaped into an opaque blob, completely blocking all views. As you might guess, views are important in this garden near Grenoble, France.
Our friends were considering removing the plant, but after thinning, they’ve decided that it’s not a bad thing to have a lilac blooming in the garden after all.
As it grows, the lower branches will need to be kept bare, and the upper branches will carry the leaves even farther out of the view.
The moral is that sometimes it’s not the wrong plant in the wrong spot: it’s the wrong maintenance. This shrub was sheared instead of thinned, so it grew opaque.
Sometimes opaque is good, where the plant’s function is to block a view. Other times, as here, transparency is best. Although a lilac is a bad choice for year-round screening (it loses its leaves in winter), often the same plant can serve either purpose. A plant can even serve both purposes, in the case of an evergreen tree that blocks unwanted views from an upper story while remaining transparent below.
So before removing that annoying shrub or tree, look to see if it can’t be transformed by some well-applied pruning techniques.