Let them grow AND THEN cut out the yellow/dead spots. Yellow doesn't always mean dead and you should give the damaged branches a chance to leaf out before chopping them off.

out here in adrian mi ... we are at least 2 to 3 weeks late this spring... so its a little early to be deciding there is no hope. ..

as noted.. let them fully bud out and start growing... BEFORE you decide what parts are dead.. or beyond repair...

with no insult to the root mass ... you might be surprised how fast they grow this year ..

or not.. lol ... i didnt realize how many boxwoods were around this area... until i started seeing all this type of damage ... now you can spot a boxwood at 100 feet ...

and the problem usually is... when there is one.. there is tens or hundreds of them ...

just out of curiosity ... are they green to snow cover.. and then whatever was exposed... is brown??? ...

they are planted awful close to that porch ... and what might have happened.. is the sun heated and reflected off the stone.. thawed the tissue somewhat.. only to refreeze later that night when it went back to two million degrees below zero ...

ken

My neighbor has a row of Green Mountain and I have a row of Green Velvet (large, but just planted late last year). Both ended up covered with snow during the winter. Hers have a lot of orange, and mine are as green as when I planted them.

Not sure if it's the variety, or the fact that hers were trimmed late in the year. They didn't get new growth, but I've read that pruning late can increase the likelihood of winter damage. Had to keep my hedge trimmers out of sight when I planted mine, because they needed shaped badly, and it drove me crazy but i knew I should wait until spring. Glad I did.

I also planted (late) two Green Mountains in large cement pots. They're totally orange and I'll be surprised if they make it. The pots absorbed enough heat that the snow melted from the sides, so they didn't stand a chance during this brutal winter. i've had hostas in various large pots for YEARS, and this is the first year I lost most of them. Sniff...

I only have one wee boxwood I planted 5 years ago by my driveway under a magnolia. It grows ultra slowly but that's what I wanted. Mine has some yellowish brown leaves but scattered all over so plant, a few here, a few there, still seems healthy. I'm going to leave it alone. I'm in SE Michigan.

OK, one more observation. When TAN happens here, that branch is dead. When orange happens here, it recovers and gets green again. Just sayin'...HERE.

How did they do??

Throwing in my '02 cents worth from 60 miles west of Chicago. I have several winter burned Boxwoods, and several other young shrubs and/or rose bushes died back or possibly died, period. The tan leaves on the Boxwoods feel kind of dried out, but not crisp, and each bush has some green growing on it. This will be an interesting spring time to see how they turn out.