Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Yardening #4 - July 11, 2014 and beyond, 2 by Muddy1

Muddy1 wrote:
Aspen, I prefer horticultural pruning, which involves reaching into the shrub to cut off stems rather than shearing the outside. You would use hand-pruners or loppers to do horticultural pruning.

These links (especially the youtube video) explain why hand-pruning is better than shearing boxwoods better than I can.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxdNdNEGj-A
http://www.mastergardenersmecklenburg.org/pruning-boxwoods.h...

I can show you an example of what too much shearing can do to a shrub with little inside growth, though. I have Korean boxwoods growing around a cable box. I shear the side against the sidewalk because it takes the least amount of time. There isn't much green growth on the inside, though, so when I overdo the shearing, like photo 1, you don't see any foliage on the inside and it looks kind of ugly.