Pieris pruning/relocation advice please

Hi

last year I moved my well established pieris (approx 1.5 mtrs high) from a south facing position where it was struggling being baked in the sun all day, to in front of a north facing fence, so it has shade for at least part of the day. It had become very leggy & spindly with leaves on the end of long bald branches. At the time of relocating i pruned back very gently, cutting out any dead and reducing it a little to assist it. And it has done much better, it has a full range of bracts appearing & some flowers this year & is obviously happy where it is. It's still very tall, leggy & spindly though and my plan was to do a reasonably significant prune after flowering this yr, in order to reshape & rejuvenate it, & hopefully prompt it to bush up a bit & sprout from lower down. I was planning to reduce by about 1/3 - 1/2. I have done this before with a pieris & it worked nicely so am reasonably confident with that....

However the neighbours are planning to plant bamboo without a barrier on the other side of the fence, so we are going to have to dig down & install our own barrier along 15mtrs of fence which is going to be a right game, but there we are.
So that's all in progress.... but... it means digging up the whole border & for reasons i wont bore you with it has to be done over the next couple of months. Which will mean digging up the pieris again despite it not being the best time to be planting/moving things. It just has to be done now I'm afraid.
Plus not being able to do it all at the same time means it will most probably have to go into a large pot for what could be several wks before going back into the ground.

so my question is this....
When do i prune it? or indeed should i not prune at all this yr?
It will be dug up this/next week & put into a pot - do i prune it at the same time to give it less 'up top' to support, or is it best to just leave it. I've seen cutting back represented as a good thing when newly planting so the plant can can focus on establishing roots with less foliage to support. But then i've also seen it represented as a shock. Obviously those 2 are both accurate in different circumstances & i'm not sure which applies here?

Any tips/insight gratefully received.

 

I wouldn't dig it up until it's finished flowering and leave the pruning until it's back in it's final position as it may be to much of a shock while it's in a pot. I wouldn't prune any more than a third off it while it's settling it's roots again, then see how it performs next year before considering any further pruning. Check the pot is a good size to accommodate the roots and leave a good amount of soil (if possible) around the root ball when digging it up.

 

thanks so much for that Sheal, I will follow your advice