Very luckily we have a correspondent who lives across the lane from Gaiety Hollow and is willing to send photos. She was in the garden yesterday and recorded the almost snow day…
and this photo reminds us of our next topic…pruning hugely overgrown boxwood to bring the garden more in scale with it’s original plan…stay tuned for news on the upcoming pruning…you can see it IS needed…
Thanks Susan!
Hi Bonnie –
Gosh, this is so FUN! ! ! You might want to tell your blog followers (does that make them blogees?) the following:
Major pruning of broad-leaved evergreens (including boxwood and laurel hedges) is best done in late winter, as the plants are coming out of dormancy. This enables the plants to push major growth in the warmth of Spring. If you prune these hedges hard in the fall, the new growth could easily burn in the cold.
If you are doing relatively minor cosmetic pruning (as in yearly pruning), the time to do it is late September, early October. The plants are not encouraged to push a lot of growth in the cooler temperatures of fall nor are they apt to be burned by the cold of winter. Following this routine will result in one pruning of your hedges per year.
As you can see, holes have been cut in the boxwood balls and hedges to allow more light penetration into the center of the plants. This enables the boxwood to have a head start on new growth when the major pruning will be done in early March. The huge boxwood ball topping out at 6 feet you see pictured here will be cut back to 4 feet come March.
What do you think????
Xoxo GHC