Taking cuttings from rosemary in Italian gardens

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinals) is a classic amongst Mediterranean culinary herbs and has been used for centuries as a medicine and as an aromatic flavouring for Italian food but its value in the Italian garden is not just limited to these factors.
Rosemary is an evergreen shrub growing to several metres in the wild in full sun and on very poor and dry terrains, making a great background plant in Italian shrub borders and a great plant for inhospitable positions. Rosemary will grow where many plants will not- either beside a hot wall with hardly any soil at the base or on a rocky slope in full sun.
Rosemary is also a plant that requires very little maintenance and this is maybe where the problem begins, because although it requires basic maintenance to maintain a rosemary bush healthy – it does require some. If a rosemary plant is left without pruning for example, it will steadily become larger and larger until it eventually begins to die out from the base and it cannot be renovated by drastic pruning. If, however the rosemary is pruned to around half its size, immediately after flowering has finished then new shoots will be thrown up from the pruned area and will ripen in time for winter. This will maintain the plant's shape for many years to come.
However, these pruned branches can also be used to provide new plants in the form of semi-ripe cuttings. Rosemary cuttings should be taken during full vegetative growth and cut below a node or leaf joint and placed in compost, watered and kept in light shade until they root. Alternatively, the same thing can be done with a 'heel' cutting where a small stem is pulled away from a main branch with a tiny heel attached and then again planted in compost and kept moist until rooting has taken place. These tiny rosemary plants can then be re-potted into larger pots as their roots require more space and water in order to grow to the size required for planting in the flower border.