On 5/12/07 10:54, in article ,
"chris French" wrote:


As mentioned sometime ago, we have some old topiary Yew in our garden.

One in particular is much to big (in width basically), it overgrows the
path too much (someone once has extended the path out to the side to get
round it), and anyway, the shape really isn't pleasing anymore.

We've decided that we need to cut it back fairly hard, to reduce the
size and to reshaped it into a simpler shape (maybe a cone or maybe a
'gherkin' type shape like another one in the garden).

Not sure when the best time will be for this - I'm thinking late winter,
before the new growth starts?

AIUI, Chris, with yews they need their foliage for dormancy (no idea why)
and it's said to be best to stop clipping after August . I think the best
time is to cut them back just when they would be starting into new growth.
You can cut back fairly hard with yew and it will grow again unlike e.g.
Leylandii. All that said, we cut ours here whenever there's time to do it so
hard and fast rules are rarely observed. It's quite hard to kill off a yew
tree! We have a couple of young ones in our garden which have been grown to
the shape of the wonderful Cupressus sempervirens because the latter don't
do so well in this country in terms of keeping their shape. Whether you
could so drastically prune a really old yew tree, I don't know but perhaps
if you did it a bit at a time - sort of one half this year and the other
half the next year.....? However, I'm sure someone will know better than I
do about that.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'