It is a 'Gold Mop' Chamaecyparis pisifera. It wants to be a small conical tree around 20' tall. They take to abusive pruning (make it be a shrub) relatively well for a conifer for about a decade before they look like crap.

could be.. but there are a lot of derivations on the theme with a multitude of names ...

observe it closely.. and figure out the last 3 years annual growth ... you can tell that by bark maturation and color ... e.g. the pic right above.. new growth bark is yellow ... last years tan ... and if you track further back... it would be brown ...

once you establish annual growth ... then you simply multiply over the decades ... 10... 20.. 30 years ...

looks to me in the pic.. you got about 6 to 8 inches of growth last year.. and about the same right now????

this is also one of those conifers that the leader is always flopped over.. and you wonder how it will ever grow upright ... and it surely does.. without any help from us...

this is how i would look for the future on carols suggestion ...

ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Chamaecyparis+pisifera+%27+Filifera+Aurea%27.&iax=images&ia=images

oh.. its a conifer which is usually a tree.. and commonly called a shrub if its planted around the foundation ....

It is a golden threadleaf cypress, Chamaecyparis pisifera. There are many gold cultivars, ranging in size from 2-3 feet to 10-15 feet, possibly more with time. This is one of the taller growing forms - which one in particular is anybody's guess - but they don't grow fast so I'd expect to see something around 5-8' after 10 years.

Conifers - needled evergreens - can be trees, shrubs or groundcovers and variations in between. Their growth habit typically will dictate how they are classified. I'd describe this a small, shrub-like tree :-))

Yup, gardengal, I have a dwarf golden threadleaf cypress right at my front door!

debra