A Luthien Tinuviel...love the name ;-) As the Johns mentioned...patience. Josh

It may be a grafted or bud grafted tree so if you cut it down to 19 or 20 inches (.5 meter) you may cut below the graft or the bud grafts. Otherwise, they are very forgiving when pruned. Cut the limbs and shape the tree as you want it. It will put on new sprouts. Prune the new sprouts you don't want. Any sprouts which come from below the current lowest limb, I would automatically remove. They could be a sprout from the rootstock. Fertilize after pruning and you should see new sprouts within 2 or 3 weeks. Pruning may inhibit blooming for the next season but it should bloom the second season.

I didn't grow mine from seed, I bought it as a small plant. This is my first year growing it, so I'm not sure I'm the best advice giver, but so far my plant is doing well. It is growing new leaves and is a bit bigger now than when I bought it. I'm still not comfortable enough to cut anything off of it though. The old leaves are browning and falling off and being replaced by new leaves, but it's still a pretty bare little plant. I know where a lot of people go wrong is not knowing that it's a deciduous shrub. In cold weather it drops its leaves and looks dead until spring, and if it's kept warm enough it'll come back. Maybe your weather wasn't warm enough for it.

I'm in Raleigh NC which is also zone 7b and I leave mine outside in the ground and it has come back every year. It does suffer for it and it can be slow to emerge in the spring but it has proven hardy for me. It is also easy from cuttings so I take cuttings in the early summer and keep a few of them inside the house in the winter just in case we have a really bad cold snap. They lose their leaves in the winter even when inside so you would think they are dead but they aren't.