Rejuvenative Pruning: Gold Mop False Cypress x2

Last year's personal landscaping project was pruning the euonymus hedge to let air and light in, by cutting back each stem to the first growth on the stem. And then there was the forsythia "pruning" which was done by hacking the shrub all the way to the ground. I'm happy to say that both of these projects were a huge success. The hedge is shorter and bushier than it was before, and the forsythia is nearly fully recovered and better than ever.

Which means...more pruning of landscaping we haven't trimmed in 4 years!

May 14, 2022
In order to properly prune, you first need to identify what the plant is. I find reddit/whatsThisPlant invaluable for this step. This time we're working with our two Gold Mop False Cypress shrubs in the front yard. We're doing a pruning a la the euonymus, so we're trimming each branch back to the first "V"-branching, or first off shoot, and occasionally cutting all the way back to the trunk, particularly in the top to let more light in. Also, being particularly aggressive on the side that faces the house. Don't need it scraping the paint off!

May 11, 2022
Do the shrubs look bad? Yes. Terrible, even? Of course. But by the end of summer, they'll fill out and be a denser, trimmer version of their earlier selves.
With a shaping trimming they'd look better in the short term, but that would just result in lots of dead branches in the middle, and only growth on the very outside (which is how they've been treated since before we bought the house). I'm trying to get these folks as small and dense as they'll go.