How should I prune a bottlebrush plant?

[Tobermory]

I have a bottlebrush plant- given to me as a very young plant by my late DF- in a pot on the patio. It didn’t flower for a couple of years (think I was under watering it) but this year has been fabulous. So now the flowers have faded I’m wondering how to keep it healthy.
Do I prune and trim off where the old flowers were?

F we have one too and the colour faded quivkly

Is it a callistemon? They can take quite hard pruning, but it sounds like all you need to is to prune off the dead flowers. It will help keep it bushy.

Yes crabb.
I’ve had it for 11 years but not pruned it up to now
It didn’t occur to me!!

So how hard a prune can it take?
Quite a lot of the stems are woody, some long lengths of bare stem (30+cm) before the leaves.

I don't think they respond well to hard pruning. Usually you just prune away the spent flower spikes, and trim to shape a bit, but if it has got leggy you could try reducing a few of the branches by half to an outward-facing bud and see what happens. Hopefully you will get new growth lower down, and then over a couple of years you can repeat with the remaining long branches.

“Most callistemons can be heavily pruned after flowering. An exception is Callistemon viminalis and its cultivars, which have a weeping habit of growth and can be damaged by pruning. For all species remove the seed cases along the plant’s stems by pruning to promote more flower stems. Old plants can be rejuvenated by cutting them back almost to ground level.” apsvic.org.au/pruning-australian-native-plants/
Also see www.anbg.gov.au/
I think you can prune to desired shape at this point.