I've tried to propogate this plant from cuttings twice. I haven't had any success yet. I tried keeping them indoors on top of the refrigerator the first time and they all died but it did take a fair amount of time. And the second time I planted them outside and kept them moist. They died even quicker that time. I took both primary stem cuttings with an off shoot and without and secondard stem cuttings. And I used a rooting hormone in both cases. Is there anything unique about how you should do cuttings for this particular plant? Or maybe a different way to grow them.

If the plant is yours, have you considered sitting a rock on a longer shoot to hold it to the ground till it roots? Then clip it loose from the original plant and dig up. (I know it works well for lots of other plants.) I just bought my first dwarf purple barberry for our foundation plantings... they are so pretty and eyecatching... but sooo expensive! So I have 2 dwarf youpon hollies then a dwarf purple barberry in sequence across the front of our house (90 ft). It actually looks nice, but sure couldn't afford to do all barberry across the front... the hollies make the barberry leaves stand out nicely.

I hope that the hollys you bought aren't as invasive as some hollys are. And it does sound really pretty. You must have some kind of siding that doesn't require painting or all those thorns would be a definite problem.

The barberry will fill in given time. It comes up with extra canes pretty readily.

I never thought about air layering the barberry. I always considered it to be to brittle to bend. But maybe I'll give that a shot. It couldn't hurt.

Thankyou for the idea.