I have a large one of these directly in front of our living room window:

https://www.invasive.org/alien...

It's lovely, and also thirty years old and in an inconvenient spot as far as removal goes. Could I get away with coppicing this thing every June or so, after flowering? That would let me have the nice leaves and display without the berries.

Any thoughts on whether this would work?

Burning bush can be pruned very hard with no problems

In case anyone is curious, we cut it down to about 2' and we will see how it goes, cutting it down again in fall if it manages to try to set seed over the summer....or again next spring, if it it does it over the winter.

I'm happy to be able to keep it -- they are beautiful trees, but incredibly invasive here. If we didn't have a management strategy we would have to pull it out. The native substitutes are subject to different pests and we do grow them elsewhere (like the often-recommended highbush cranberry) but the BB has no pests whatsoever, and its colors are stunning, and it is very close to our front door.

It's the berries that make it invasive, so you've done the right thing. My property has several invasives, (56 species and counting!) the small one I just pull up, but the big ones I remove the flower heads to prevent seeds. That will have to do until I can get around to removing them. As long as they can't reproduce we're good.

Another plant that was the big deal late 60s to mid 70s in hort

It's one of my favorite shrubs. Needs no pruning, forms a pleasing shape on its own, gorgeous fall color. It is not invasive in my region that I have noticed. For a time, it was seriously over-used in parking lots and such, but those were mostly tortured into short balls that are almost unrecognizeable from its natural form.

When we bought this place it had some burning bushes. During the closing I told DW that upon arriving back to property, job 1 was to exterminate the burning bushes. They were probably 20 or so years old. They took all manner of digging, chopping, and mangling. I still have a 2" stump that won't go away after 4 years but we're getting there. They're dead, Jim.

My landscaping son calls burning bush 'you wanna miss' that one, I think because it has been so over-used.

They self seed- fortunately my chickens scratch out the seedlings under the part sticking over my fence.

I've never had one self seed, fortunate I guess. I do get lots of berries, so must be something about my region that discourages self seeding (too wet?). I have two mature shrubs and love them.

I'm going to try to either pollard or arborize it or bonsai it or something -- some kind of intensive management b/c I do really like it but it shows up all over the yard and I've got glossy buckthorn or whatever it is to do battle with. Never mind the bittersweet.

I wonder if I could coppice the buckthorn. Maybe I could keep it from getting berries and continue to let it hang out because I've got those invasive roses with the eight foot long whips to deal with.

Invasives are, in a way, kind of an interesting thing to deal with on a large scale b/c you have to pick your battles. (I don't use Round up. It's just not a thing. Plus, it's a largish property so even if I were comfortable with it I'd be basically a toxic waste site dumping it into the stream that runs through....and I can't burn, because poison ivy.)

Chess with plants.

With invasive plants I think a good walk in the park trails helps me get a good perspective
One of the places we walk has 90% bush honeysuckle, burning bush and privet almost no natives left
My place is overloaded with bush honeysuckle, I spend a week every year cutting it out
I don't find many burning bush any more because the nearest neighbor cut down their two large bushes about 5 years ago.

in case anyone is interested:

Basically, we coppiced this and cut it down to roughly 18". Probably should have gone further but didn't have the nerve. But we did a few cuts later and I'm noticing really strong pollard type growth at the ends....so I'm going to continue to play with it in different forms. It's not like it's going to up and die. It seems it's very clear on that point.

Where we live, it is very invasive....it shows up all over the place on the property. Spaces that should go to elderberries or serviceberries. But I love it, it's beautiful, it's pest-free, and if we can keep it from trying to reproduce I want to keep it.

It would be interesting to see if we could manipulate foliage size, like on a smokebush.