How do I shape lantanas?

I have some lantana plants - one with yellow flowers, one with red, one with purple-ish flowers. They are small now. I read that they will grow as ground cover or can be shaped into shrubs. How do you shape them into shrubs? Do I get a trellis to get them to stand up, or what?

There are two different kinds of Lantana--Lantana montevidensis usually has lavender or white flowers and tends to be more trailing and groundcover-like, and Lantana camara usually is in brighter shades of red/orange/yellow and tends to be more shrubby. Your red one is almost certainly a L. camara cultivar, and your lavender one is L. montevidensis. The yellow one is probably L. camara as well, although I have seen a pale yellow cultivar of L. montevidensis but at least up here most of the yellow ones you see are L. camara. For your L. camara plants, they naturally have a more shrubby growth habit so you probably won't need to do too much to them.

I should add there are actually more than two different types of Lantana--what I really meant was there are two types that are common in the nursery trade around here :-)

ercane3, thank you. I'll get some photos, which will be better than my descriptions...:) Another question along these lines: I've had the yellow one since last year and over the winter it lost its flowers and did became more 'woody' - when the weather warmed up it bloomed a lot, again, and got bigger. But if they "shrink" down in winter, how do they ever grow into shrubs?

There are some very big, shrub-like lantana growing all over my neighborhood.

I think they sometimes need a couple years to get established--I have the same problem with my small plants, but then as I drive around I see huge plants so I think they must just take a couple years to get going, and once they get big if they die back a little in the winter you'd hardly notice. I have trouble up here with the L. camara cultivars though, they are supposed to be hardy to zone 8 or so, but I frequently have them die during their first winter in the ground and never come back. L. montevidensis seems a bit hardier, I lost some of those too in that really cold snap we had a couple years ago, but for the most part they seem to do a little better. But you're in a warmer zone than me so you'll probably have less trouble.

http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/hgic1177.htm ...
http://www.floridata.com/ref/L/lant_c.cfm ...
http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/lantana/lantana.html ...

Hope these links help with your lantana!!

Karin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for the information, ercane3 and Karin. I notice in one of those links it says if they have berries you have to cut them off so the plant will bloom again. Really? The lavender colored plant does have berries, which I like. When I got it (recently) it had berries AND flowers. Now the flowers are gone, I guess I have to cut off the berries?

The yellow and red ones bloom repeatedly and I guess they don't have berries, or not many, anyway.

I usually don't bother cutting off the berries and they still seem like they keep blooming pretty well. I'm also not sure at what point you'd have to cut the berries off to keep it blooming--it's the same principle as deadheading where if you cut spent flowers off before they form seed they'll keep making flowers, but since the berries have the seeds in them, I expect you'd have to catch it when the berries are just beginning to form or else it would be too late.