HOW TO PRUNE A MEATBALL BOXWOOD

My affinity for meatball boxwoods is no secret. In my very informal garden, they are one of the few nods I give to formality and I like the structure they provide.

I usually prune boxwoods toward the end of June, but this year was a little behind weather-wise and then I left for awhile so I didn't get to them until this weekend. That's probably a tad on the late side, but I think they'll be OK. You want to prune them after the big flush of new growth, but not so late that the growth that is spurred by pruning doesn't have adequate time to harden off before winter.

I'm no master pruner, but my meatball technique gets better with practice. When I first started pruning boxwood, I would use a hand pruners and cut back to a leaf node, which is how you are supposed to do every other kind of pruning. That never led to a very nice look, though, so I switched to hedge shears, which look like giant scissors. Those are fine, but they lack a certainly ability to make detailed cuts. A couple years ago I switched to sheep shears. These are a hand killer, but give you so much more control over your cuts.

I now have four meatball boxwoods in the garden, the largest of which is probably 10 years old now. Here's what it looked like before pruning.

When you prune shrubs, you're never supposed to go in at the bottom, shading the bottom branches, but I do it anyway. Boxwood are resilient and I so prefer a globe shape over a straight-sided dome. I do it entirely by eyeballing it; I'm not sure if there are other, more technical, ways to prune meatballs. I start but trimming a few inches in each hemisphere, all the way around the shrub, sort of dividing it into eighths. Then I add in another "band" of pruning horizontally along the top quarter. After that, I just fill in the gaps. I also use a hand pruner to cut out any dead wood (like in that bottom righthand corner).

There's a lot of standing back and looking at it from afar and from different angles and going back and snipping a little more. I don't take off a lot of material because I'm happy with the size of this shrub. I would guess I end up taking off about half of the new growth, and a little more in some areas (for instance, you can see the lighter green area in the front that for some reason grew more than other areas).

And here's the finished meatball. It's not super tight, like some boxwoods at formal gardens, but it's too my liking. AfterI took this picture, I actually went back and took off a little more on that upper left hand corner because it felt like it was standing a little proud to me.

And here's a little before and after gif to easily show the difference.

What do you think about meatball plants? I know some people abhor them. I just can't help myself ... little round balls of plants make me happy.

TAMING A BOXWOOD MONSTER

I am an unapologetic lover of meatball boxwoods. I know plenty of people abhor manicured shrubs, particularly squatty balls of boxwood. I'm not one of them. They make me oddly happy. So much so that I just added three more potential meatballs to my garden despite the threat of boxwood blight.

The 'Green Velvet' boxwood on the corner of the main garden has been a fixture there for several years now (I'm guessing maybe seven or more) and despite the fact that it gets buried in snow from the driveway every winter (or maybe because of it), it has thrived there.

Pre-prune, the boxwood is looking a little shaggy.

I've always been a little bashful about getting in there and really pruning it tightly. But this year it put on a lot of new growth and was starting to look a bit like a shaggy monster. In the past I've pruned it with just hand pruners, but this year I brought out the big guns: A proper hedge shears and some newly purchased sheep shears (picked up specifically for this purpose) for the detail areas.

After the prune, it's much neater.

I found that it was easiest to prune it in hemispheres. So first I followed the prime meridian in the middle of the shrub, then I did the equator, all with the hedge shears. After that I just filled in from there. When I had a rough cut finished, I went back with the sheep shears to clean it all up.

I probably took off a good 5 or 6 inches of growth, which not only neatened it up, but made it fit the space a bit more. When I was finished I took care to clean up the clippings really well. Even though boxwood blight is not in my state yet, it's probably coming and it pays to be tidy when dealing with fungal diseases.

Before pruning (above) and after from the same angle.

I like to prune boxwoods in late June or early July after they've put out their major flush of new growth but with plenty of time for any growth that is spurred by the pruning to harden off before winter.

This tightly pruned look isn't for everyone, but I love it, especially nestled amongst some of my more natural-looking plants, like the Nepeta 'Walker's Low' behind it that flops rather delightfully around it.