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Box balls question

19 years ago

Hi,

I have 10 Boxwood 'Green mountain' in containers and 4 in the ground.

They're 14-20" high and have never been trimmed.

My question is, do I shear them down to ball shape all the way,

leaving only the small cavities resulting from uneven growth,

or do I approximate the ball first, trimming roughly,

and refine the shape over a period of time. If the latter, how often?

Hope one of you experts out there have an answer,

Thanks in advance!

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Comment (1)

littledog
19 years ago
The way I do mine is to just trim them as much as possible into the shape I want and allow the shrub to fill in the blank spots on it's own. I have a neat one that's about 3 feet tall that I originally grew as a loose trapezoid to get the height and width, and this past spring trimmed up into a pair of stacked balls. (MOL a Boxwood Snowman in the making) It isn't perfectly round yet, but by next year it should be just fine.

Other than that, I really only trim twice a year just to maintain a general shape, especially on small shrubs.
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