Um.. what is the first shrub, and why did you remove the lower branches last year?

Not sure but it was suggested it could be shaped a bit. Somelone posted pics..it looked nice when done but is still a bit !arge. The yellow one is a monster...it is taking over.

The yellow one is a conifer, a threadleaf cypress. Pruning these to reduce size is problematic at best.....it would have been better to do so in small doses over the years to maintain a smaller size rather than waiting until the shrub got too large for the location. There is not a lot you can do to it now that would not adversely affect both the appearance and health. It might be best to remove if too large for that location (and it will only get larger).

if that first one is a burning bush.. just be done with it ... perhaps you recall it being blazing red last fall???

your base problem is that you have a root mass for a huge bush .. and even if you went to town on it.. within a year or 3.. it will be right back to being huge ...

if you look at it is right now.. and compare its current size.. you can tell it was planted for the cute little thing it was when it was brought home from the store.. with no real clue as to its potential .;... been there .. done that ...

otherwise.. once we can ID it.. you could use a search engine for REJUVENATION PRUNING .... of such ... the problem there.. is its right out front.. and it might not be pleasant to look at for the 2 or 3 years it takes to rejuvenate it ...

i think the yellow is stunning .. and not badly sited .... being mostly surrounded by lawn ... if you went to buy that exact plant ... you might pay a thousand dollars for it .. perhaps that will make you appreciate it more.. lol ...

if not.. just get rid of it ... lifes to short;. to be irritated by your landscape ... and for sure.. on this one.. no haircuts ....

ken

Okay I guess we leave the yellow one alone. The other one looks like it'll be a real bear to dig out so I open two pruning I guess I could look into the best way to do that if there are no recommendations. That leaves the square shaped one I'd really like to cut that all the way back but I don't think there be anything left to grow I don't know... If I cut it back all the way how long would it take to start to see regrowth

I found the earlier thread, where the shrub on the corner was identified as a snowball viburnum. Like the burning bush, it is a poor choice for a foundation plant. Keeping it there will require chopping it back to a small and ugly state every few years, or continuing with the unhealthy frequent shearing.

I’d keep the yellow conifer. While not ideally sited it looks like it gives you some privacy from your neighbour’s entrance.

How about the square one...remove or cut back

Can you post a closeup of leaves? Looks like boxwood from photo but can’t be sure. If so, it is easily shaped and pruned.

The fact is that the square one has already been cut back many times. No shrubs grow naturally square. It does indeed look like box, in which case they are eminently shearable and actually look ok as balls etc, unlike the larger leaved deciduous shrubs, eg your Viburnum, which sometimes get mistreated that way. Personally, I'd double the width of the path if possible and the shrubs wouldn't look so out of scale.

the 3 between the corner of the garage.. and the yellow one ... would all be removed if it were my house ...

to my eye ... they are over sheared ... and old .. and when you start mixing new plants with old plants ... it just doesnt look right ... like a well though out design ....and there nothing wrong with being old.. other than you have no real options from changing them ...

its a common builders issue.. of leaving you that little 2 or 3 foot space of dirt ... causing many peeps to put in foundation plants with HUGE potential... and then spend the rest of their lives shearing or complaining about them ...

get rid of everything in that little bed defined by the sidewalk .... and plant a perennial bed that is more suited to the space allotted ... if you need height ... go with some trellis and vines like clematis or some such ..

cant really see behind the yellow... but it looks like you have 2 decent conifers .. properly spaced ... ????... but i would probably remove the other oversheared plants .... if you want more opinion over that space.. give us a pic ...

and if when it was all said and done.. and the yellow, blue and green conifers irritated me .... they would be gone also .... i learned a long time ago.. regardless of value... living with a prior owners mistakes is not a worthwhile venture ...

and if you want some ideas on the whole front facade.. get a pic of the whole thing ...

ken

Just realize that the above is Ken's personal opinion and not necessarily a practice you should or need to follow :-) From a landscape design standpoint, evergreen plant material and even a few deciduous shrubs have a much stronger garden aesthetic than something that will not be visible for a good portion of the year. That is really important with a front entry garden. And whether the shrubs are oversized really depends on your evaluation of that characteristic. The boxwood is extremely easily pruned so the size of that plant is not really an issue......the others that will not take to pruning well may pose a different situation.

I would agree that much would be remedied by removing the existing walkway, which is much too narrow, and pulling it out away from the house some distance as well as doubling the width. That will afford both a much more welcoming entry to the house as well as enlarging the planting bed so that any pruning is less of a requirement. You can also easily increase the size of the bed on the other side of the entry where the collection of conifers live.

im just playing devils advocate ....to try to make you think outside the box you are sitting in ....

i dont know about moving the cement .... i might put beds out in the lawn for some sizable conifers .... and use the small area for the perennials mentioned above ...

ken

Ken, consider removing replacing the walkway as thinking outside the box :-) That is by far the single most common suggestion made to update or freshen an existing landscape. For whatever reason, builder sidewalks/walkways are always substantially undersized and not well thought out with respect to location.

I had wished the walk we're about 18 inches back....but that's what I have to live with. I'll post a close up of the boxwoods... assuming that's what they are....do I just cut them back all the way? I had luck doing that with other plants at the other end if the house last year...but these only seem to have leaves on the outside. When do I so this? Now? I'll try to get more oucs tonight..

ok, here goes, left side of house...the 3 little brown guys, don't recal what they are but I cut them waaaaay back last year. They were about 5 times as big and not really blooming. They came in nice last year. In back of the little brown one on the right are 3 green ones, one taller and two shorter and rounder. I thought were almost destroyed by snow a few years back. They are all the same. The two smaller fuller looking ones were similar to the taller one on the left. I cut them back and they filled in nicely. I was going to cut the left one back to but sort of like how it looked and was afraid since there did not seem to be much growth at the bottom. Anyway, between the 2 right green ones and yellow we have grassy type plants that flower come up...in fact they are just starting to come up.

on the right side of the house..first up is the blue spruce I pruned..it used to have branches down to the ground and you almost could not walk by it. Then something I planted last year that is supposed to stay narrow and then the boxwoods(?) They have leaves on the outside but not much inside...can I take these waaay back like I did the little brown one on the left side and maybe reshape? And the burning bush or whatever it is...I'd still like to try to shape it into something else.

Yes that's Box.

Respectfully, to my eye, you are systematically mangling every plant that you have. Please cease and desist, at least until you properly identify each one and learn its habits. That's the botanical side. The other side is taste, which of course is personal but still.... Can you take some pictures of the most attractive similar landscapes in your area and let us instruct you how to get there? You have such great material (and house) to work with.

Actually, all the pruning done, has been done over two to three years with advise from this forum. No, I do not recall the identity of them though they were identified by folks in this forum who helped me identify how best to trim them. Things were overgrown and a mess. Things are now looking far better. I did not loose a single one. What in your opinion is mangled? I am simply asking if the boxwoods can be taken back...how far and when. The burning bush may need to come out... probably should not have been planted there. I am leaving the yellow spirea alone. But it's what I inhereted,..even pruned as such looks way better than it did....it was all 20 years old..looks better than most in my area now...trying to keep it that way....

I apologize. Thst was tactless. I was responding to what looks like over shearing and limbing up into lollipop forms I do think that sheared forms can be attractive (ie Shuugakuin in Kyoto) but they must be integrated in an overall form as well as infividudl specimens. That’s where I see the design lacking. As they put on growth this spring I’d let them assume a looser shape and touch each other. Add a groundcover to unify them snd conceal unnatural trunks. Does this make sense and does anyone else agree?

Actually the unnatural trunks look better than the giant ball it used to be....lol...I'll see if I can find an old picture. I may mess around with it...it really should be removed......not sure how far it's roots spread... the discusion last year lead me to believe it might be difficult to get out...

So about those boxwoods....prune all the way back? Now?

It seems I can do whatever I want with the burning bush ......try
to reshape it to look like a little tree....mushroom it again...whatever....worst
case I could have it removed I guess.

The boxers, if they are...the thought is I cut them all the way back this
weekend, like I did the others on the left side of the house at this time last
year, and allowed them to ball out....might look better next to the smaller
stuff alongside them anyway...again, worst case remove them.

Any final thoughts....if it blows up in my face I will be
back asking what is appropriate to put here...

Just a reminder that it isn't a burning bush. It was ided as a Viburnum. Quite a different kettle of fish.

Anyone feel free to correct me, but as slow growing as boxwoods are, if you cut one of those back severely, it will be quite some time before it looks decent again..

I hear you on the boxwoods but to be honest if they don't come back I'll probably just have to replace them. They're just so big and overgrown and when I try to cut them back there's no foliage left. I wish the walk was out further or they had planted them somewhere else. Regarding the viburnum.. it's just too big and taking over. I hate to say I'm going to make believe I'm an artist and try to make it look different and maybe it will die ...maybe it won't ...my biggest fear if it does die is how I would ever get that thing out of the ground.... again I wish it could have been planted somewhere else.

For better or worse I took the boxwoods backs to about a foot tall. To be honest green was mostly on the outside of the plant the inside was dense but with hardly any green however to my surprise there was some green all the way back down by the ground ..

anyway we'll see what happens with these and if they don't come around I'm that much closer to digging them out.

The issue I mentioned is not that they are unlikely to survive that sort of hard pruning, but rather that because they grow very very slowly, when you cut them back that far it may be a LONG time before they look like a full, green shrub again. You're going to be looking at sticks with sparse green leaves for a while :)

The trick with box is to clip them over regularly, several times a year, in order to keep them the same size more or less indefinitely.

Well, if it comes back I will. If my foot were not messed up I might have just dug it out....