To prune, or not to prune? (landscape, growing, Hedges, trees)

[gentlearts]

Do you like highly pruned bushes and shrubs?

I have an aversion to sculpted and pruned bushes. I like them better when they can just grow into their natural shapes.

Then again, I hate when things get overgrown and out of shape because they have not been tended. I'm conflicted.

Last week, my neighbor, who I call "Mr. Negative", caught me in his drive way and told me that I should prune the bush next to my house because it might get 25' tall. So, I'm thinking to myself..so? His house has a nonsensical variety of bushes that have grown too tall and lost all their lower branches, and have been sculpted into weird square shapes. Ick.

[misplaced1]

I like a a garden more natural but I do try to keep some of my shrubs in bounds. What kind of bush is it?

[gentlearts]

They call it a red tip, but I don't know the correct name. It has plenty of room, there are no windows on that side of the house and I think it looks fine growing big. We will trim of the sides of it if it ever encroaches too far outside of the flowerbed.
All around my house are brick planters with boxwoods and ilex lined up like little soldiers. The former owners kept them pruned into little round bushes, or squared off rows (like mini hedges) and these I sort of like that way. Along our back fence are very tall bushes which could stand a good pruning, because they are a little thin at the bottom, but we enjoy the privacy that the natural growth provides.
I don't expect anyone to help me decide, I just wondered if most people like one way or another.

[Bulldogdad]

I like both depending on the plant, area and look I am trying to achieve. There is no right or wrong. However a great deal of landscape plant species have been cultivated to be maintained through various forms of pruning. If not they get unmanageable, ugly, diseased and pest ridden.

[North Beach Person]

Prune to direct growth, to control disease and to shape. Other than that do what you want.

[carolyninfl]

I like a trimmed bush

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by carolyninfl

I like a trimmed bush

Well, it depends. sometimes trimmed is appropriate sometimes wild in all directions is ok.

[J&Em]

Originally Posted by bulldogdad

I like both depending on the plant, area and look I am trying to achieve. There is no right or wrong. However a great deal of landscape plant species have been cultivated to be maintained through various forms of pruning. If not they get unmanageable, ugly, diseased and pest ridden.

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

Prune to direct growth, to control disease and to shape. Other than that do what you want.

Prune for all of the above and to keep your shrubs and trees full looking, since cutting them back promotes new shoots further back down the stems.. Many shrubs actually benefit from pruning because when kept trim they don't become leggy which makes the susceptible to wind and heavy rain damage. Other than that do what makes you happy to look at your own home.

[subject2change]

I feel the same way about shrubs pruned in unnatural shapes. At my old house I had shrubs I pruned only to remove dying branches, crossing branches, or if they were really outgrowing their space, maybe an odd branch that grew weird. At our new house we have several shrubs they'd been pruning in ball-like shapes. Last fall I pruned "overacheiver" branches that had grown out of proportion to the rest, but I didn't try to get them so perfect with a hedge trimmer. There's a burning bush that was put in WAY too small of a space (those things get gigantic) that I'm afraid I'll eventually have to take out.

[Garden of Eden]

I prune for health purposes for the bush, and for the look I wish to create. I tend to side with the natural look, but still, a bush needs tending to. It also depends upon the variety of bush it is and the location of that bush.

Every year, I inspect my bushes pruning dead branches or branches that look troublesome to other branches. Some of my bushes, if left to themselves, tend to get leggy, and so I prune them back, or the runners as I call them to make the bush look more even. Pruning also will help a bush look fuller.

I like to work with Nature and I do something that may sound a bit odd, but I am saying it anyways. I allow the bush to "speak" to me on how it wants to look. I just get this "knowing" on what to do and how to do it. I guess you could call it a connection with Nature, I don't know. But my method works, because all my bushes are happy, and disease free.