Personal Protective Equipment
This is absolutely essential. Living dangerously is cool, don’t get me wrong… but so is having all your fingers and eyeballs.
A pair of durable gardening gloves is very helpful when pruning. They’ll protect your hands and help you keep a good grip on your tools.
For pruning a Buxus, look for cut- or puncture-resistant gloves that are also flexible. Garret Wade has you covered with some heavy-duty ones that resist punctures and cuts.
Heavy Duty Cut Resistant Work Gloves
Eye protection is another must, especially when you’re shaping foliage with sharp tools.
Granted, the risk of plant matter flying towards your face is lower with pruning boxwoods than it is with tree work. But there’s still a chance, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Plus, I occasionally wipe the sweat off my brow with the back of my dominant, pruner-holding hand, and I’d hate to poke out an unprotected eye. That would be a really lame story for how I got an eye patch.
When shopping for gardening eye protection, look for anti-fog, anti-scratch, impact-resistant, and/or UV-resistant glasses.
If you’re already bespectacled like me, then safety goggles will leave plenty of room for your prescription eyewear.
For premium safety glasses, NoCry has some available on Amazon.
If you need something to wrap around your spectacles, then Aquilius has a three-pack of wraparounds that you might like, also available on Amazon.
Hand Pruners
Hand pruners are used to make small, precise, and detailed pruning cuts. Even beyond pruning, a reliable set of hand pruners can make gardening a whole lot easier, so it’s definitely worth the investment.
If possible, select bypass pruners. Bypass pruners utilize a sharp blade which narrowly passes by another, just like a pair of scissors.
This allows for a crisp and clean cut, and you won’t dull the blades prematurely like you would with other cutting mechanisms.
A high-quality set of bypass pruners is available from Gardener’s Supply.
Hedge Shears
With their long and sharp blades, hedge shears yield a higher pruning volume per slice than hand pruners.
The blades are usually set at a slight angle to the handles, which makes both low and high cuts more comfortable.
And if you manage to snag a pair with telescopic handles, you’ll be able to prune those pesky, just-out-of-reach patches of Buxus.
Fiskars Telescoping Power-Lever Hedge Shears
Acquire a set of high-quality, telescopic-handled hedge shears for yourself via Amazon.
Hedge Trimmer
If spending the entire afternoon with a jumbo pair of scissors in your hand sounds tedious, you can forgo the hedge shears and use a hedge trimmer instead.
A hedge trimmer’s “blade” has two rows of teeth on both sides, and the top row alternates back and forth, moving just above the lower row.
This creates a bilateral line of bypass-cutting teeth, which can be run through unshorn boxwood foliage like a very noisy knife through butter.
Hedge trimmers can drastically speed up boxwood pruning, provided they’re used effectively.
Since they’re power tools, hedge trimmers require caution and safe operating practices. Ear protection could also be needed, depending on the loudness of the model you’re using.
A hedge trimmer runs on either gasoline or electricity, with gas-powered models usually being the loudest, heaviest, and most powerful.
Electric trimmers either have rechargeable batteries or need an extension cord. Of the electric trimmers, battery-powered models offer convenience and ease of usage, while corded ones provide more power.
Greenworks Cordless Hedge Trimmer
If you’re looking for a cordless hedge trimmer, check out this Greenworks model from Amazon.
This 24-inch model is lightweight and cordless, with nearly a full hour of charge from it’s included 2 AH battery!
Rake
This tool isn’t so much for pruning boxwoods as it is for cleaning up afterwards. As you prune, boxwood clippings will often remain on the shrub itself, which takes away from that manicured look you’re shooting for.
A gentle combing of a pruned boxwood’s foliage will drag those unseemly clippings off the plant real good.
But tidying up a boxwood post-prune isn’t just for vanity: keeping your Buxus free of pruned detritus will help to keep it healthy, since dead plant parts are prime entry points for pathogens. All the more reason to break out the rake.
Speaking of which, a solid product for the job can be purchased from Garrett Wade.
This lightweight rake adjusts in width, allowing you to reduce the width to get into tight, narrow spots, or expand it for bulk cleanup.
Isopropyl Alcohol
As tools move through plants, they’ll pick up any pathogens that reside in or on infected tissues.
These disease-causing agents can easily hitch a ride on tool surfaces and spread from plant to plant. Sanitizing your tools in between prunings can help reduce the odds of contagion spread.
A simple way of doing so is with isopropyl alcohol, which will kill any pathogens and sterilize your tools.
Use anywhere from 70 to 100 percent alcohol, with water making up the rest of the solution.
A bottle of 99 percent isopropyl alcohol is available from Solimo via Amazon.
Apply this sterilizing concoction by spraying or lightly pouring it onto tool blades and teeth. You can even dip the contaminated parts of your tools straight into the mixture. Be sure to wipe away the solution with a rag afterwards.
Don’t forget to exercise caution, as isopropyl alcohol is flammable and can irritate the skin.
When to Prune Boxwoods
For the casual Buxus owner, an annual pruning will be enough to promote aesthetics and health.
You’ll want to time it right before the plant breaks dormancy and has that first flush of spring growth. This will end up being in very late winter or early spring.
Late spring pruning is also acceptable, and may be ideal for those wanting an especially well-manicured shrub.
You won’t have quite as vigorous of a spring flush, but by pruning later in a boxwood’s growing period, the shrub won’t be warped and misshapen by new growth as much.
Small touch-up prunings can be done throughout the spring and summer, if laser-honed shrubs are the goal.
