How to Cut Back Evergreens

Keep your evergreens from overtaking your yard.

Incorrectly cutting back or pruning an evergreen can leave it with unsightly thin spots, or you could damage the tree. If you damage your tree, you could leave it open to infestation from bugs or injure it to the point that it stops growing and eventually dies. Cutting back an evergreen involves cutting back the boughs without over-thinning the tree. You also need to take care how you cut the branches, so you don't injure it. Done correctly, your evergreen will look tapered and manicured while remaining healthy.

Things You'll Need

• Ladder
• Pruning shears

Instructions

1. Cut brown, dry or discolored and dead branches prior to trimming green boughs, making sure to snip the bough at approximately 1/2 inch in from the dead portion of the branch using the pruning shears.

2. Trim between 1 and 3 inches of the tips of each bough, tapering them so as to maintain the tree's original sloping dome or conical shape.

3. Clip every one of three or four branches to cut back up to 30 percent of the tree's mass.

4. Cut adjacent "tree tops," leaving the centermost treetop in place. Sometimes spruce trees develop more than one treetop, so you need to cut the additional ones off near the trunk.

5. Trim during early spring because new growth can set in during spring and summer.

Tips & Warnings

• Establish the tree's final volume by trimming from the bottom upward. If you trim from the top down, you could trim too much from the top, which would require cutting too much from the bottom to maintain symmetry.

References

• Buckeye Gardening: How to Prune Evergreens