an extremely old... [in suburban terms] .... over trimmed ... improperly planted old hedge line ... IMHO

the best thing you could do.. is to EVENTUALLY remove them.. and plant your own future nightmare .... lol

with that in mind.. do whatever you want.. based on others experience ... but if it all fails to impress you .. just get rid of them ...

one problem with you finding various answers... is that growth rates can be extremely affected by winter ... e.g. ... they will regenerate much faster ... in places that have an 8 to 10 months growing season ... as compared to one where the season is 6 months [due to ground freeze and winter] ...

you are going to get all kinds of answers.. watch where the advice comes from ...

we have covered this many times before [unsearchable titles] .... and if memory serves... its about 50/50 as to peeps coming to the eventual decision to remove them ...

ken

ps: anything can be done .. its just a matter of how long you want to look at the uglies .. before they recover ... i like to tell peeps .. if it looks ugly out back on acres #4 .. i might have a lot more tolerance for a multi year experiment.. as compared to it being right out the front door.. where i have to look at is... many times per day .... at least yours doesnt appear to be right out the front door ...

Ken,

Thank you for the advice & information! It's really helped me a lot..

Though replacing them with my own future nightmare ;) sounds quite appealing, I think I'm gonna try my luck trying to salvage them.. The worst that could possibly happen is that I get the oppurtunity to replace them with a landscape better suited to my needs/style :)

To keep them at 4 ft, they will need to be cut shorter. Two to three feet is about right. Kept watered and fed, they should look like something by next spring. Yews aren't really slow growing plants. The 18 inches you cut off this winter may have been only one year's growth.

Ahh cool! That makes a lot of sense.. Thanks!! Will chop them down to 2-3 feet & fertilize/water well :)

I agree with mad gallica but yews will look ugly and bare for at least a year. If you are disciplined with your pruning, yews will be wonderful to work with after the corrective pruning and assuming there are no underlying diseases from prior neglect, but one thing at a time. Prune away! I live in Houston area FWIW

If you cut off all the actively growing buds it will take a year or two for dormant buds to awaken and another year or two to return to growing strong. They will look powerful ugly for two to four years.

tj

Thanks so much for all of your comments/ suggestions! Definitely looking toward a multi year approach with the Pruning now..Top, then sides.. Or possibly thin it out a lot to allow light to the dormant buds, then chop it once the inside starts growing..

Anyway, thanks so much!

Hello!

Thank you everyone for all of the advice! I did some experimentation in early march, and I thought I'd share the results.

I tried 2 things:

#1 - Thinning out the hedge to encourage new growth inside.. I did this on one of the hedges in the row (very much so.. its a bit patchy now).. I didn't see any significant new growth.. a couple very small buds here & there, but overall, not exactly what I was hoping for.

#2 - I chopped 1/3 of the height off the hedge.. I chickened out of doing this on the main row (its very visible from the street), but did it to a less visible row of hedges (see picture). Its still has a bit of filling in to do (particularly around the gutter), but overall, I'm quite pleased with how quickly it went from "almost dead" to "green" :)

On another note, the hedge all the way in the back wasn't part of this experiment & didn't get the kind of love that these ones got.. Though it was also chopped 1/3, it was much later in the year & done in a very quick manor to access a utility (hence the odd angle at the top)

thx for the update .. brilliant idea.. wish i had thought of it.. lol ...

its filling in better than i ever expected ... but you need to relax a bit.. these are trees ... they work in their own time ... not yours.. so it may take a year or 3 to fill all the way back in ..

brilliant idea.. to experiment on plants unseen ... give you info so as to work on the more public plants ...

ken

I love follow-ups! Thanks for taking the time. I like that you pruned them below the siding in the photo immediately above since they are planted so close to the building. If you replace any of the foundation plants, leave enough space between the projected size of the plants and the building to get in to to maintenance. With shrubs I usually give at least 2', one for me and one for the shrub to overgrow projections from a reliable source such as the Missouri Botanic Garden.

Whether to keep them long-term or replace can be answered by whether they fit what you want to look at for your landscaping and if they function well to meet needs such as shade, bird habitat, etc.

I like the height and also the more casual shape. Bravo!

bman-if you're still around, lol-I have not read this complete thread, so will apologize in advance if I'm merely repeating something already said.....but do avoid the ultra-common mistake of cutting inward towards the base of the plants. For the life of me, the only reason I can think of why this poor practice is so universal is monkey see-monkey do. In fact, if the basal portions of the plants are kept ever so slightly wider than the top, sunlight will continue to hit all parts equally and the plants will eventually be lush and full. Cutting inward towards the bottoms is the route to leggy, unattractive plants with much dead stuff showing.

Thanks everyone :) After this experiment, I definitely feel much more comfortable with the Yews & think I am ready to take on the big ones this spring :)

wisconsitom:

Thanks for the advice! Was definitely planning on keeping the hedges with a wider bottom than the top.. If all pans out as I am hoping, I actually plan to attempt shaping the hedges to more of a circular mound shape.

As far as the smaller hedge row in the back goes, the bottoms are already mostly bare (only about 12" of green at the top). I do plan on hopefully fixing that in the future, but want them time to recover a bit since i just chopped off most of the needles this year.

You've got the right idea. I also prefer a rounded, mounded top, although truth be told, I have exactly zero sites these days where I do sheering-style pruning of anything! Oh wait, my mom's got some boxwood she wants me to touch up!