Evergreens a REAL MESS! Pruning help please

Clarksville, TN(Zone 6b)

When I moved in a month ago the front of the house was a MESS!
They had:
* 4 evergreen trees/bushes (8 ft high)
* with a shorter form of evergreen between (I don't even see them until I started cutting some of the other shrubs out!
* 3 Bayberry(?) shrub (5 ft high) in front of the Evergreens
* 3 ? Shrubs (3 ft high) in front of the Bayberry
* and last 3 clumps over grown (2 ft wide) Monkey Grass!

Ok a bit of over kill! That was only one side of the windows... the same thing was in front of the other widows too! I took out (sawed down) 4 of the trees, 2 on each side, all 6 of the Bayberry (all 3 of each side, they are already starting to send out sprouts from the ground) and trimmed all the ? Shrubs to just under 2 ft..... now here's the problem.

The Evergreen trees are heavily infested with Bagworm, so infested hand picking would never be a possibility. The remaining Evergreen trees have huge dead areas (see picture). When & how do you prune them to allow regrowth of the area? Any ideas of a quick/low cost way of preventing them from further damage, all those Bagworm casings are just waiting for spring to start destroying them some more. I am not a big fan of Evergreens but don't want to have to saw them down, they look pretty good aside from the damaged areas. I really wish I'd taken pictures of this place before I started working on it! I always swear I'm going to do it next time, but I just jump right in the minute I move in!

This message was edited Sep 19, 2004 8:48 PM

Thumbnail by Crimson
Clarksville, TN(Zone 6b)

How about this type, it's the small Evergreen type bush that was hidden between the big evergreen trees until I cut out 4 of them. Most have little to no Bagworm damage except this one. How & when to prune?

Thumbnail by Crimson
Clarksville, TN(Zone 6b)

Here's the front of the house now that I chopped everything out/down... see the Evergreen trees look pretty good... from a distance. Can you imagine 8 of them and all that other mess that was there?! I swear you couldn't see the house! Looking out the windows was definately not a option!

Thumbnail by Crimson
Beaverton, OR

It's hard for me to say much more than I'd just shear them lightly to maintain some shape.

It looks like the first is thuja orientalis - a globe shape arborvitae. Those don't sprout from bare wood, so don't cut all the green off.

If the next plant lacks white bands or marks underneath the needle, and has pointed needle tips, it's likely a yew. If so, those will sprout from bare wood, so you can get more aggressive. But no point in defoliating those now just to see brown until next spring.

Post a Reply to this Thread

Please or sign up to post.
BACK TO TOP