Need Privet (Boxwood) input Please.

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treeman

Member
These look to be English Boxs. My experience with boxwoods is you can take them back hard but it will take a couple of years to get a good looking hedge back. I don't particularly like the sheared, boxed look like on these. When you shear you need to leave a couple of inches of growth to maintain green. In evitably after some time they get out of bounds. I prune my MILs boxes annualy by thinning, with the object being to open up the interior some light penetration. Usually whenm I am done the untrained eye can hardly tell I've prunned and I do take out lots for my Christmas business. I have maintained the same height and width on the boxes for the last 20 years using this method.

At another family place we took down a double row of entrance way American boxes from 20 to 25 feet tall (grown together) down to 2 feet in one fell swoop. We cut back to stobs that were 4 to 6 inches in diameter. It took about 4 years for these to fill nicely, but they responde immeadiately the next season with new adventitious bud emergence. The effect was rather surreal for a couple of years but not althogether unattractive.

English boxes are a bit more difficult as their natural tendency is to not form a main leader like American boxes. But they can be thinned carefully. You will know if you thinned enough by looking at the interior stems the next fall. If there are new shoots developing down in the older wood, then there is adequate sunlight to stimulate the latent buds. Keep thinning annually there after and you will have a continuous crop of replacement shoots coming on.

When I'm prunning I'm always aiming for a more natural shape and not the fine sheared look.
 

Flower4Yeshua

Super Moderator & vegemm
Staff member
Wes, Thank you for the great information...I am going to do some very heavy pruning on them....I don't really want to keep them...so will slowly remove them from the yard....but just a bit overwhelming to do all at once....I think I will experiment along the way in pruning them, as I know slowly we will remove them all..could be fun ...
 


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