Boxwoods are slow-growing plants that don’t require a lot of maintenance. However, your boxwoods will benefit from occasional pruning. Regularly, trimming your boxwood will give your boxwood hedge a neat and polished look. Here, I’ll show you step by step how to prune boxwoods. Below is a video showing step-by-step how to prune boxwoods.
3 Reasons to Prune Boxwoods
1. Improve airflow
Boxwoods are dense plants. Pruning your boxwoods will improve the airflow. It will also bring more light to the inner branches which will reduce diseases.
2. Stimulate New Growth
Pruning boxwoods encourages new growth. This will result in denser growth. Just be careful and don’t prune your boxwoods during late Fall. You want the new growth to have time to harden off before the first frost.
3. Shape your Boxwoods
Pruning boxwoods will control overgrown boxwoods. Occasional pruning will give your boxwoods a nice shape.
When to Prune Boxwoods
The best time to prune boxwoods is in the Spring. But you can prune your boxwoods any time of the year as long as it’s not too close to the first frost of the year. I don’t recommend pruning boxwoods in late Fall and winter because you don’t want to stimulate new growth in the winter.
How Often Should you Prune your Boxwoods?
Prune your boxwoods once a year. Your boxwoods will benefit from the once-a-year pruning because it will stimulate new growth and improve airflow.
Tools for Pruning your Boxwoods
You will need a small pruning shear and a large hedge trimmer. For smaller cuts and cuts to the inside branches, I mostly use the small pruning shear. The large hedge trimmer is mostly to shape the boxwoods exterior.
Check out: Best Cordless Hedge Trimmers
How to Prune Boxwoods
It’s easy to prune boxwoods.
Step 1: Prune the Inner branches
Open up your boxwood. You can see it’s so dense. Cut off the inner branches. And remove dead branches and leaves. This will improve airflow. It will also bring more light into the inner branches.
Step 2: Prune the Outer Branches
After cleaning up the inner branches, you can start working your way to pruning the outer branches. There is a lot of uneven growth that sticks out. Work on pruning back the uneven growth that sticks out.
Cut below in the inside branch. Keep pruning until you trim down the uneven growth.
Step 3: Shape your Boxwoods
After removing the uneven growth, you can do some final shaping of your boxwoods. Just remember you don’t want to over-prune your boxwoods. Over pruning your boxwoods can kill your boxwoods.
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