Pruning 50 to 100 year-old boxwoods

Who knows how to prune a very large, very old boxwood. It is so tall, it growing over the windows.

I have about ten 42 year old boxwoods and am wondering the same thing.

If I pull back the branches, I see a lot of dead branches and such underneath. It seems like only the outside 6 inches or so is actually alive. They certainly don't look like they could even survive a small pruning, so I'm going to just leave them alone. I'm interested in seeing if anybody comes out with any real ideas.

Dave

Well, someone told me you can cut them back a foot---no more---in the winter. I did this and they have now leafed out. Someone else told me that I needed to thin them out...but that doesn't sound right to me...seems like you'd have a bunch of bare spaces. Was wondering if anyone had had any experiences with pruning them. I have 2 I may do some experimenting on.

Don't know if this applies to boxwoods or not, but this house we bought had a hedge (not boxwood) with the same growth patterns. I was sure the inner parts were dead. However, some slight pruning back to non-leafy branches several times over 2 years has produced a lot of new growth where I would not have thought possible. It begins to look like a real hedge now!

I just found the American Boxwood Society web page. They said you should never shear boxwoods. You need to thin them. I've been shearing mine. Has anyone been thinning theirs? They call it plucking.

i reduced mine from 4' to about 2', and will chop it down again. since i chopped it down, i have new growth on old wood, all the bare stems now are green with buds.
chop chop chop, for me anyway

Tim, when did you cut it back 2 feet? I have read that you can only cut it back one foot and only in winter when it is dormant. Is it a "true" boxwood?

it's a japanese boxwood with a trunk of about 3" diameter, with nice roots. i'm trimming it down so i can bonsai it.

let see, we bought the house last july, i think i chopped it back in early or mid august, and in florida i'm not sure if it can get a dormant period.

i also chopped one 2 yrs ago, i took about 1.5' off, and got new growth on bare branches.

The problem with severe pruning of trees in general is the stress the tree has to endure. Besides possibly causing serious wounds that can funnel decay into the main trunks of the tree, you are also removing the food gathering ability of the tree. (Removal of the trees leafy crown.) The tree must leaf out a new crown or die. This new crown may seem fresh and vibrant with new shiny leafs, but the reality is that the tree is using all its energy reserves to build new branches and leafs, in an effort to begin to “feed” again. This can be a long lived stress that can eventually debilitate the tree by causing many other problems, such as root loss and disease, cavities, straight un-tapered branch structure and weakly attached branches. Of course experimenting with a small shrub is different than butchering a more stately tree. Still if they were mine I would only deadwood and thin them.

I think that the American Boxwood Society is an invaluable resource for people with Boxwoods, their manual on Boxwood care is terrific and well worth the ten bucks they charge for such a small volume. I work mostly dwarf "English" boxwood-- Buxus sempervirens Suffriticosa, I "pluck" them every November to keep them nice and round and fluffy, that is to say not too stiff. Plucking is much healthier and bennificial for the plant than shearing, but the English and Japanese shear their Buxus to tight velvet forms that look more like moss covered stones than any shrub, and they get away with it. I would say a combo of the two schools of thought would be safe ground.
When dealing with the restoration of large and aged Buxus I would go for Plucking and stick to the one third rule(remove no more than one third of total plant volume at a time).

I had a resturant in the N. Ga. mountains that had some that were 75+ years old. They were huge. 5X5. I think they are the English kind. Very soft to touch. We later found out they had been wired together at some time to hold their shape. Of couse the wire had grown into the stems.
Around 1985 a man came by and wanted to buy some cuttings to use for Christmas decorations and to root. This was in the fall. He said he would shape them and it would help them to fill out in the center. I would have given them to him, but he gave me $40. Knowing nothing about them I said ok. He took of about 1/3 in height and volume. They are bounced back very fast and are still beautiful. I guess its a chance you take.
Later these boxwoods caught fire. They burn extremly fast. I ran to get a hose and by the time I got back 3 were blazing and spreading to the next creeping towards the resturant. We prayed please don't let the resturant catch fire and by the time we got the hose to them the fire was dieing out. Very Bizzare. Stupid me I had a fire extingusher in the kitchen and never thought about using it! The boxwoods are now huge again. They must be 100 + by now.

I've been reading up on this and what I have decided is that boxwoods are supposed to look like clouds, not like balls. And plucking them is the best way to achieve this. I sheared some at a bed and breakfast whose grounds I tended, because they had been sheared for many years, but I have one in my yard that has probably been there for at least 50 years and nothing has been done to it and it is very cloud-like, much more natural looking. But when they cover your windows, as they did at the B&B, you have to do something. I cut those back about a foot and they survived quite well. There were some others at the front door and I severly pruned them, just as a test and they did leaf out, but the owners removed them before I could see what would happen. Just as well, they would have gotten too big for the space.