Staring at overgrown, shaggy bushes in your yard? Most homeowners know their bushes need trimming, but don’t know where to start: what tools to use, when to cut, or how much to remove.
This guide shows you exactly how to trim bushes, hedges, and shrubs so they look neat, healthy, and professional. Whether you have small boxwoods by your front door or tall hedges along your property line, you’ll learn the right techniques for your specific plants.
Rather let a pro handle it? LawnStarter offers bush trimming as a standalone service — one-time, quarterly, or annual trimming to keep your landscape looking sharp year-round. Get a free bush trimming quote and save yourself time and effort.
Key Takeaways:
- Trim non-flowering bushes during the growing season (May through July) for quick recovery.
- Choose the right tool for the job (ensure it’s sharp and clean).
- Always wear safety glasses and work gloves.
- Always remove dead, diseased, or damaged branches.
- Never remove more than one-third of a bush’s foliage at once.
Why Do You Need to Trim Bushes?
Trimming your bushes and hedges isn’t just about keeping up with the neighbors. It’s about maintaining a neat, intentional landscape that enhances your home’s curb appeal and functionality.
Regular trimming:
- Maintains appearance: Keeps bushes neat and well cared for rather than wild and unkempt.
- Controls size and shape: Prevents overgrowth into walkways, windows, driveways, and neighboring plants.
There are many reasons to trim a bush, says Patrick O’Malley, horticulture specialist with the Iowa State Extension in Van Buren County. “One is to shape the plant so it’s better-looking,” he says.
Sometimes trimming keeps a formal hedge looking sharp and professional, O’Malley says, and sometimes it’s needed to prevent shrubs from blocking windows, encroaching on walkways, or crowding out other nearby plants.
See Related:
– What’s the Difference Between Pruning and Trimming?
Before You Start: Things to Know
There are a few things you need to know and do before you start hacking at branches, giving your overgrown shrubs a haircut.
1. Have the Right Tools
Trimming is all about shaping surfaces and maintaining clean lines, so your tool selection is different from pruning. Here’s what you need:
| Primary Bush Trimming Tools | |
| Tool | Best For |
| Hand pruning shears | Touching up stray branches on small ornamental bushes |
| Manual hedge shears | Small hedges, detail work, or if you prefer quiet, precise control |
| Electric or battery hedge trimmer | Most hedges and medium-to-large bushes; fast, even cuts |
| Gas-powered hedge trimmer | Large hedges or all-day jobs; more power, heavier |
| Pole hedge trimmer | Tall hedges you can’t reach from the ground |
Tool blade style:
Beyond selecting the right tool for the job, blade design matters.
- Bypass pruners and loppers work like scissors, with overlapping blades that make clean, precise cuts on living branches.
- Anvil-style tools have a single blade that presses into a flat edge, giving you more cutting power for thick, dead wood, but potentially crushing delicate green stems.
Keep tools sharp and clean:
Dull or dirty tools create jagged cuts that are more prone to disease. “It’s good to have sharp tools, whether a pruning saw, loppers, or pruners,” O’Malley says.
Always disinfect pruning tools before you begin, between plants, and after every cut on diseased wood. A quick wipe with rubbing alcohol or diluted bleach (1 part bleach to 9 parts water) prevents the spread of diseases that can devastate your landscape.
My Tip: Don’t forget safety glasses and work gloves. Flying debris and branches are no joke. A few years ago, I was trimming my lilac bushes without safety glasses (or sunglasses), and caught a branch in the eye. Since then, my kids don’t let me anywhere near pruners without eye protection.
2. Always Watch for the 3 D’s
While trimming for shape, you might spot dead, diseased, or damaged branches. While they fall more under the definition of pruning, it’s crucial to remove dead, diseased, or damaged branches whenever you see them using hand pruners or loppers. It’s quick maintenance that keeps your bushes healthy.
How to Trim Bushes and Hedges
The key principle: Proper trimming never leaves your plant looking butchered or obviously cut. It should look natural and effortless, enhancing the natural shape.
If you must continually trim rapidly growing shrubs, it may mean the plant is a poor fit for that space in your landscape.
Basic Touch-Up Trimming
Most homeowners aren’t trying to create perfect geometric shapes or ruler-straight hedges. If you’re like me, you just want your foundation plantings and landscape shrubs to look tidy and stay within their designated space.
Best for: Informal landscape shrubs like azaleas, spireas, viburnums, and other ornamental bushes planted around your foundation, in beds, or as accent plants.
Best tool: Hand pruning shears for small shrubs; hedge trimmer for larger informal plantings
When to trim: When the plant starts looking “shaggy,” with branches poking out in random directions, or when it’s growing beyond its space and crowding walkways, windows, or neighboring plants.
Technique:
- Step back and assess: Walk around the plant and identify branches that disrupt the overall shape or stick out awkwardly.
- Follow the natural form: Work with what the plant wants to be. Don’t try to force a naturally loose, open shrub into a tight ball.
- Trim lightly around the perimeter: Remove just the tips of wayward branches to bring them back in line with the plant’s overall shape.
- Maintain proportion: If you trim one side, cut the opposite side similarly to keep the shrub balanced.
- Check your work often: Step back every few cuts to make sure you’re maintaining symmetry.
For naturally rounded shrubs:
- Imagine a soft dome or mound over the plant (not a hard geometric shape).
- Work around the plant in a circular pattern, trimming high spots.
- Turn frequently to view from all angles.
- Avoid creating flat surfaces — keep the shape soft and natural.
Basic Hedge Trimming Technique
Medium to large bushes are often used as formal hedges or foundation plantings. The larger surface area makes uniform shaping the priority.
Best tool: Electric or battery hedge trimmer
Technique:
- Work from bottom to top in smooth, sweeping motions.
- Keep the blade parallel to the hedge surface.
- Let the blade do the work (steady pressure, not force).
- Step back every few passes to check evenness.
- Clear clippings as you go with a scything motion.
For straight, level cuts:
- Use a taut string line between two stakes as a guide for the top.
- Work along the string line, keeping your cuts just below it.
- Hang a plumb line or use a level board as a visual reference for perfectly vertical sides.
- Frequently check from different angles.
Critical shaping rule: Make the hedge slightly wider at the bottom than at the top. This tapered shape (called a “batter”) lets sunlight reach the lower branches, preventing bare spots at the base.
Trimming Evergreens
Evergreen shrubs maintain their foliage year-round, making them popular for privacy screens and foundation plantings. However, they come with one critical rule: Never cut into old, brown wood — it won’t grow back.
Best tool: Hedge trimmers for formal shapes; hand pruners for natural, loose forms
Trimming technique:
- Make multiple light passes rather than one heavy cut. You can always take more off, but you can’t put it back.
- Work with the plant’s natural shape.
- Trim conservatively. Evergreens fill in slowly, so mistakes take years to correct.
- For naturally rounded or mounded evergreens, follow the plant’s existing curve.
- Step back frequently to check for symmetry and balance.
How to avoid flat-top syndrome: Shearing the top of an evergreen flat creates dense surface growth that shades out lower branches, eventually causing bare spots below. If you want a flat top, maintain a taper (wider at the bottom than at the top) on the sides.
Special Situations
Trimming Near Your House
Key rules:
- Keep bushes 12-18 inches from walls (allows air circulation and maintenance access).
- Trim walkway bushes so they don’t brush people passing by.
- Check for electrical boxes, AC units, or utilities before cutting.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
✗ Don’t cut too much at once: Never remove more than one-third of the bush’s total foliage in one trimming session. This stresses the bush or hedge and can create permanent gaps.
✗ Don’t create flat tops on naturally rounded plants: Shearing a dome-shaped shrub flat looks unnatural and causes dense surface growth that shades lower branches, eventually creating bare spots.
✗ Don’t use dull blades: Dull trimmer blades tear and shred rather than making clean cuts, leaving ragged edges that brown and invite disease.
✗ Don’t trim unevenly: Staying in one spot and over-trimming one side creates lopsided, unbalanced shapes. Step back frequently and walk around the plant to check your work.
✗ Don’t cut into old wood on evergreens: Evergreens won’t regrow from bare, brown, woody stems. Once you cut past the green growth, that section stays bare permanently.
✗ Don’t trim too late in fall: Late-season trimming (September or later) encourages tender new growth that won’t harden off before winter, resulting in frost damage and brown tips.
✗ Don’t force unnatural shapes: Trying to trim a naturally loose, open shrub into a tight geometric ball fights the plant’s growth habit and requires constant maintenance.
✗ Don’t forget cleanup: Leaving clippings piled around plants traps moisture against stems and creates a breeding ground for disease and pests.
O’Malley says a common mistake he sees is homeowners cutting too much off the plant at once. “Sometimes when folks cut into old wood, it doesn’t grow back,” he says. “That’s because they cut below those dormant buds, where the new growth would normally pop out after pruning.”
FAQ About How to Trim Bushes
All are ways of cutting plants. “Pruning” usually means selectively removing branches. “Trimming” and “shearing” often refer to surface cuts for shaping. The terms are often used interchangeably.
Trimming frequency varies. Fast-growing hedges like privet may need trimming 2-3 times per season, while slow growers like yew might only need one annual trim in early summer. Other plants may never need trimming.
My Approach: I don’t follow a rigid schedule. Instead, I keep an eye on my landscape and reach for the trimmers when bushes start looking shaggy or begin crowding their space.
Trim during the active growing season (May through July), so plants recover quickly and fill in evenly. Avoid heavy trimming after August, as new growth won’t harden off before winter.
Cut back flowering bushes based on when they bloom: Trim spring-flowering bushes, like azaleas, immediately after they flower. Trim summer-flowering bushes, like hydrangeas, in late winter while they are dormant, before bud break in spring.
See Related: When to Prune Flowering Shrubs (and How to Do It)
Boxwood blight is a devastating fungal disease that causes rapid leaf drop and stem dieback in boxwoods. It spreads easily through contaminated trimming tools, making tool sanitation absolutely critical when working with boxwoods. Once boxwood blight infects a plant, there’s no cure.
Always disinfect tools before and after trimming boxwoods, and never trim wet foliage. Watch for brown leaf spots and black stem streaks. If blight appears, stop immediately, bag all clippings, and disinfect tools before using them on other plants.
When to Call a LawnStarter Professional
Trimming a few small shrubs is a manageable weekend task. But large, overgrown bushes and dense hedges require time to handle the job effectively.
Still not sure about DIY trimming? Ditch the snips and call a professional.
LawnStarter now offers bush trimming as a standalone service. Whether you need a one-time shape-up for an unruly bush blocking your picture window or a quarterly service to keep your hedges perfectly shaped, we make it easy.
Get your bushes trimmed by a local pro and enjoy the results of a perfectly manicured landscape.
Sources:
Patrick O’Malley, commercial horticulture field specialist at Iowa State University Extension, Iowa City, Iowa. Personal interview.
Main Image: Gloved worker trimming green hedge. Image Credit: serhiibobyk / Adobe Stock
