You can cut them way down and they will grow back.

"So, when does the time come to yank this type of evergreen out of the ground?"

When you tire of trimming them.

As bboy said, they will take quite severe pruning and resprout...eventually...usually.

tj

WHEN TO GO?????

when your last teenager/young adult moves out of the house.. and leaves you the job of trimming them once or twice a year .. lol

GET RID OF THEM .. if they are no longer pleasing to you.. and then plant something that does not require maintenance ...

how close to the foundation are they ... if they are within a foot or two.. just cut them to ground level.. and drip some roundup/stump killer on the stump .. not much is needed ...

and then enlarge the bed away from the house.. and plant something else, further from the house ... say 4 feet out ... so that the replacement has space to grow out into something pleasing.. without you having to go out there with a machete every year ....

as to the above.. yes you can cut it severely ... but i dont like to do that.. if its right out front of the house ... you have to be willing to be very patient in watching it regenerate for a year or two... and trimming it during that time.. to shape it back into a form that is pleasing... perhaps a project for the back 40 acres .. but not something you will want out in front of the house ... besides the fact.. that you will be back to trimming it once or twice a year thereafter ...

it never failed to amaze me.. how dad hit the limit and made me come back and rip out all the overly mature foundation plants.. the season after i finally moved out.. lol ...

ken

*Before* you pull them out, do some thinking and research about what you want to replace them with.

It's less likely to happen where you are, since you should have more plant choices, but here it is fairly common for people to yank overgrown yews, only to find out that yew is the only plant that will do what they want done in that specific location. So instead of waiting a year or two for severely pruned plants to grow back, they end up waiting several years for small plants to establish. In the end they haven't gotten anywhere.

I'm in SC Kansas and many of the Yews here were burned last summer by the combination of drought and continuous 100+ degree temperatures. Some of them are all brown. Hopefully, they come back. If not, I may have to cut out all of the dead stuff and let them fill back in. They were so nice looking too.

Hello, again. I'm pretty much embarrassed to find out I have less yew bushes than I thought. At the same time I'm happy to have less with which to contend. They certainly spread out, don't they.

I appreciate your comments. They helped. A few hours ago I had the bushes trimmed back quite a bit. It did take using a chain saw. There's some green left on each. I already like the openess and that the heavy branches are not jammed against the house. Thanks again. Gene

We had to pull ours out with the pickup and some chains, they were ~30 years old.

Stupid Yews :shakesfist:

Hello, everyone. I think most of us like to find justification for actions. I was on the Net checking out DIY insect control spray for in and out of the house. A mini movie said to spray two feet up the wall and two feet out from the wall when doing the outside. Before now I couldn't do the area of my overgrown yews. Now I can.

MoleX - We like out truck and chains, don't we. I pulled up some other overgrown shrubs a couple of months back. My chain generally did okay but sometimes I couldn't get it tight enough around the base. I wound using a fifteen foot tow rope and catch from Northern Tool. It tighten as I pulled. Any port in a storm, huh. Gene