Pruning yew?

I have 3 yews in a front flower bed that look straggly. I will be completely redoing this bed in a few days. It has purple iris, butterfly flower (lavendar), bulbs, mint. I plan to make it a butterfly bed, and use purples, lavendar, grayish leaved plants, white and yellow. I had intended the yews to round out the sharp straight corners. Will they get taller or just keep spreading horizontally? Will they eventually die out and be bare underneath? Can I successfully prune them? It is not a full sun bed, gets some shade, faces west, but the sun is blocked some by a front wooded area about 30 feet away.

i have no idea how they grow
If it was mine id dig em up and plant them somewhere else and start that area over
they look way to tall for that spot and you could grow so many other plants in that area *wink wink**
coral bells jumps out at me (all the time ask connie)

But if you wanted to keep them there maybe you could trim them to be more compact!

but thats me.......!

Peggy I'm with Dori....not even sure what type they are? you could try to shape them up. They seem to be some type of a spreading yew? Mine grow straight up so I'm able to shape them box style...Some really nice dwarf butterfly bushes would look great there and they grow fast, or some cone flowers and they are pretty tall to...most butterfly gardens I've seen have some pretty tall perennials in them.

Thanks! Since it's too early to plant anyway, today I'm going to clean up the bed, pull the sneaky Ivi out of the vinca, and prune back the yew. In a few weeks if it isn't looking good, out it goes!
Detheo your boxy hedge looks good! Looks like a lot of work though. :-)

Peggy I take motrin before I go do it...they are almost the whole length of the house....the smaller ones are boxwoods...but it's all worth it in the end ^_^

I should probably have taken it before I tackled mine tonight. ! spent 3 hours working out some family frustrations on them.

oh dear is anything left of them LOL....

Better your yew than your husband. :)

When I was pregnant over 30 years ago I gave my husband a haircut and just peeled his head. It was right before our son was born. I must have been very hormonal or something. :) All the newborn pics of him with our son are funny. He sure got scalped. :)


Brenda

Not this time. It was better yew than my daughter and her boyfriend. LOL!