Any hints or tricks for the care and feeding and pruning of Oleandar?

[BOSSHOG]

I've read and researched and have been fairly successful but wonder if anyone has any super duper secret plan to make Oleandars great and not merely good. We have some on the east side of the house (not near the house and they get ample sunlight for most of the day.) They are growing fairly well, I pruned them to the ground last spring, much to the horror of my wife, but they came back great although the blooms are rather scarce. They are about five feet tall now. I plan on wacking em back again next spring. There are some monsters in the French Quarter that don't get any love at all and they look great. Ours are three years old.

A humble thanks for any suggestions.

[Gormy Cuss]

1. I do next to nothing to mine.

I cut them back when they get too tall or wide. That's it. Mine are mature bushes living in the worst soil that I have --hard clay with minimal water in the summer and the oleander roots have wet feet all winter.

Plenty of blooms with or without pruning, too.

[BOSSHOG]

2. Thanks

How old are yours? How far do you cut them back? How big have yours gotten? A neighbor has some that he planted two years before we did and his are about seven feet tall high and about seven feet across. Our are scrawny compared to his but I anticipate ours will do likewise. Ours look pretty ragged early last spring, lots of yellow leaves.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. Ours are at least 15 years old.

They are considerably smaller than most around here thanks to the harsh conditions. I guess that they're about 7-8 feet tall and about 5 feet wide. I only have white flowering oleanders, if that matters.
When I prune I take off 2-4 feet at a time but I don't prune the whole bush at once. In any given year it may be about a third of the branches that are cut.

Oleander is a common highway shrub around here and those suckers are easily 10 feet tall. Many older homes have oleander as privacy barriers -- solid hedge-like plantings of very tall oleander. In this climate that means that they're easy.

[Kolesar]

4. Soon they're going to be in bloom up in Annanburg

... a Steely Dan song.