I normally wouldn’t prune them, but I’m trying to help them recover from when the previous (idiot) owners pruned them like boxwoods. That and they fact that they’re growing onto the deck.
But I won’t prune the forsythia. I’ve got it along the woods in the back. The larger and more unruly the better.
An apartment complex nearby has a 90 feet long forsythina neatly trimmed as a hedge row. When the dark mulch is put down, the contrast of the green grass, the mulch and the yellow bloom is very striking.
Every year, it reminds me of Catherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond saying in that shaky unsteady voice of hers...."The forsythias are in bloom!"