Ask-a-Dave's-Gardener: How to rehabilitate sheared plants? , 4 by camner

camner wrote:
About a year ago I moved to a new house whose previous owner loved to sheer plants. Ugh!

I am hardly a master gardener, but I do understand the basic principles of pruning and I\'m reasonably successful at maintaining the appearance and health of plants that either I planted or were in decent shape when I inherited them.

But, I really don\'t know how I should go about rehabilitating plants that have been sheared for quite a number of years.