ID and pruning advice please!

The yellow-y leaved thing on the left looks like a Spirea - some sort of Japonica hybrid [and I don't mean a Prius!]. The greener-leaved one on the right may be the same (were the flowers the same?)


I would reckon that hard prune to fresh growth from the bottom would be the trick - it will flower on old wood, so you want to leave some newly formed shoots which will then bear next year's flowers

 

Sorry, missed the bit about Photinia. I can't stand the things, so I would cut it down to the ground!

If its a deciduous one I don't think it will like any hard pruning at all. Similarly if evergreen, but for evergreens I think cutting earlier in the year would be better, the soft growth it may make after pruning now might get zapped by a cold winter.

 

I am pretty sure that this is the same plant that i hacked down to the roots more than a year ago in my neighbours garden
Never got the time to dig it out. And its still as big as ever this year!
Indestructible.

 

"the thread updates too"

Indeed, the thread only has a link to the image [not a copy of it], so when my computer displays this thread it goes to PhotoBucket to get the actual picture. Change the picture there and it will change in my browser too (well, almost, my computer saved ("Cached") a copy of the image, so it didn't change, but I've refreshed the page and got the smaller image now - but anyone new reading the thread will see the latest, smaller, version of the image)