pix would really help us understand what you are trying to do ...

i would suggest hand pruning further into the plant.. rather than shearing ... it would be time consuming.. but would really make an impact .... there was once a This Old House video about such ... but i cant find it

ken

well.. it took me 20 minutes.. but i found it..

at the link .. look for:

Posted by wendyb 5A/MA (My Page) on Tue, Nov 15, 11 at 19:09

wherein she provides the link to the video i referred to ...

forget about the plastic link ... and watch until they describe the hand pruning process ...

as an aside.. who wears white pants out to garden.. crikey ... lol ...

so after the plastic link nonsense .. roger does a pretty good job.. showing you what i mean by 'hand pruning' ... consider it excersize.. and go to it ... i am sure you could find many u tube type videos if you tried ...

BTW .. arbs are conifers .. more properly.. but i dont care where you post ... the reason i mention it is that one of the ways ... IN MY HEAD ... that i differentiate the two.. is that their are different rules for how to prune each ...

good luck

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link