What a clipping session looks like

Most of the hobby is two or three clipping sessions a year per plant, each an hour or two on your feet on a patio or in the yard. You set the pot at a comfortable height, lay a sheet underneath to catch clippings, and work around the plant taking thin slices off the newest growth. Every few cuts you step back several paces to judge the outline, because the shape is impossible to read from arm's length. Between sessions the plant does the work: each cut tip branches into two or more, so the surface gets denser every time. The rest of the year is ordinary care: watering the pot, feeding in spring and watching for pests.

Huge old yews clipped into rounded mounds topped with tiered knobs, under a gray sky — Old yews clipped into mounds and topknots

Boxwood

The classic choice, with tiny leaves, slow growth and a tight surface that holds a shape with one or two clips a year. Check whether boxwood blight or box tree moth is a problem in your state before buying.

Japanese holly

Looks almost identical to boxwood, is not affected by boxwood blight or box tree moth, and is the usual stand-in where those are present.

Yew

Dark, dense and able to regrow from bare old wood, so mistakes heal. It is the best plant for large pieces, but every part of it is poisonous if eaten.

Privet

Cheap and fast, so a shape fills in within one season. The price is clipping three or more times a summer to keep it tidy.

Size to buy

A 1 to 3 gallon plant is big enough to shape right away and small enough to turn on a table.

What to look for at the nursery

Foliage that is dense right down to the soil, an even shape all the way around, and for cones and standards a single straight central stem.

What to walk away from

Bare patches inside, leaves with brown spots or orange tints, webbing in the foliage, or roots circling thickly out of the drainage holes.

Shapes, from easiest to hardest

Ball

Follows the way most shrubs already grow, and small errors disappear in the curve. Start here.

Cone

A ball with straight sides. Canes tied at the top give you a line to cut to.

Cube or low block

Looks simple but shows every wobble in a flat face. Cut the top slightly narrower than the base so light reaches the lower leaves.

Standard

A ball on a clear stem, like a lollipop. It takes two or three years because the stem has to grow to height first.

Spiral

Cut into an established cone by following a ribbon wound around it. Wait until you have a dense cone at least 3 feet tall.

Figures on a frame

A wire form sits over the plant and you clip whatever grows through it. Slow to fill, but the frame does the measuring for you.

A single clipped green cone standing in a round bed of low flowers — A clipped cone in a round bed

Picking shears and keeping them sharp

The core tool

One-handed topiary shears, sprung like sheep shears, which leave your other hand free to feel the surface and brush clippings away.

Blade length

About 2 to 4 inches of cutting edge for small shapes. Longer blades cut faster and flatter, but they are harder to steer around a curve.

Spring tension

Squeeze them fifty times in the store or on the first day. If your hand aches, the spring is too stiff for a two-hour session.

Steel

Carbon steel takes the keenest edge and rusts if put away wet. Stainless is easier to live with and needs sharpening more often.

Sharpness test

The blades should slice a single leaf cleanly at the tip. Torn or folded leaves turn brown at the edges within a week and spoil the finish.

Before every session

Wipe both blades with household rubbing alcohol so you do not carry disease from plant to plant, then give each bevel a few strokes with a sharpener.

After every session

Wipe off the sap, dry the blades and add a drop of oil at the pivot or spring.

Orange-handled bypass pruners resting on the soil of a white pot beside a lawn — Bypass pruners resting in a pot

Your first shape, start to finish

What you can shape in your first month

A boxwood ball

One young shrub rounded off by eye and checked against a cardboard template, the classic first shape and the most forgiving one.

A small cone

An upright shrub clipped against three canes tied into a tepee, which teaches you to cut flat faces.

The start of a standard

A single-stem plant staked upright with its lower side shoots removed, the first stage of a ball on a bare trunk.

A matched pair for a doorway

A second ball clipped to match the first, a real test of your eye for size.

Boxwood and Japanese holly

Once in late spring or early summer after the new growth hardens, with an optional light tidy in late summer.

Yew

Once a year in late summer is enough to keep a crisp line through winter.

Privet

Every four to six weeks from late spring to late summer.

Stop date

Finish at least six weeks before your first expected frost. Soft regrowth from a late cut is killed by cold and leaves brown tips until spring.

Weather

Avoid hot, sunny afternoons, which scorch freshly exposed inner leaves, and avoid wet foliage, which spreads fungal disease on your blades.

Hard reshaping

Cutting back into older wood to shrink or rescue a plant is a job for early spring, just before growth starts.

What trips beginners up

It is slow

A ball looks finished in a day, but a tall cone, a standard or a filled frame takes two to five years of growth.

The first clip looks rough

Expect a slightly lumpy shape with pale cut edges for a few weeks until new growth covers it.

Cutting too deep

Boxwood does not reliably resprout from bare brown wood, so one enthusiastic cut leaves a hole that can take years to close.

Uneven light

A pot left against a wall grows thin on the shaded side. Give it a quarter turn every couple of weeks.

Forgetting the pot

A clipped plant in a container dries out fast in summer and needs water far more often than one in the ground.

Starting with a spiral or an animal

Both rely on a dense plant and a trained eye. Two seasons of balls and cones get you there faster.

Shrubs shaped into ducks with yellow bills in a garden under pine trees — Shrubs shaped into ducks

Blight, moths and poisonous clippings

Boxwood blight

A fungal disease that causes dark leaf spots, black streaks on stems and sudden leaf drop. It arrives on new plants, tools and clothing, so buy from a nursery that inspects its stock and keep a new plant apart from others for a few weeks.

Box tree moth

An invasive caterpillar that strips boxwood and leaves webbing behind. Parts of the US and Canada are under quarantine, which can restrict moving boxwood plants across state lines. Your state extension service lists the current rules.

Yew

The leaves, seeds and clippings are toxic to people, dogs, cats, horses and livestock. Bag the clippings and never throw them where animals graze.

Sap and skin

Boxwood and privet sap irritates some people's skin, and long sessions raise blisters, so wear gloves.

Height

Keep your first pieces below shoulder height so you never reach overhead with blades.

Where to learn and what to go and see

Specialist societies

The European Boxwood and Topiary Society and the American Boxwood Society publish clipping advice and the latest on pests and disease.

Public gardens

An hour in front of mature pieces teaches proportion better than any diagram. Longwood Gardens and Ladew Topiary Gardens are two of the best known in the US.

Your state extension service

Free, local answers on which shrubs suit your climate and which boxwood problems are present near you.

Local garden clubs and botanical gardens

Many run a pruning or topiary workshop in spring, usually with plants and tools provided.

A formal garden with small clipped cones at the corners of flower beds around a fountain — Clipped cones in a formal public garden

Societies and gardens to visit

How the kit is put together

The essentials are a plant and two cutting tools: one-handed shears for the surface and bypass pruners for anything thicker than a pencil. Spend most on the shears, since a keen edge is what makes a finish look clean. The recommended lines turn that into a comfortable routine: a pot and potting mix so the plant can sit at working height, fertilizer to fuel the regrowth that thickens the shape, a sharpener, gloves and a sheet for clippings. The optional lines are for later shapes. Canes and twine make cone guides and support standards, a wire frame is for figures, and two-handed hedge shears only earn their place once a piece is bigger than a beach ball.

The clipping kit

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the kit panel. Clicking a card selects it there, and clicking the selected card again takes that line out. The shrub, both cutting tools, gloves, sharpener, pot, potting mix, fertilizer and tarp start in the kit. The canes, twine, wire frame and two-handed hedge shears start out of it until you move on to cones, standards and larger pieces.

Young boxwood shrub

Essential · Plants

This is the material you sculpt. A young, dense plant is cheap enough to learn on and small enough to turn while you work.

budget

Green Mountain Boxwood | 1 Live Gallon Size Plant | Elegant Pyramid-Shaped Evergreen, Ideal for Topiary & Landscaping, Cold-Hardy & Drought-Tolerant

3.7(13)

$39.97

Topiary

What a clipping session looks like

Choosing a shrub to clip

Shapes, from easiest to hardest

Picking shears and keeping them sharp

Your first shape, start to finish

When to clip

What trips beginners up

Blight, moths and poisonous clippings

Where to learn and what to go and see

How the kit is put together

The clipping kit

Young boxwood shrub

One-handed topiary shears

Bypass pruners

Gardening gloves

Garden tool sharpener

Planter pot with drainage

Potting mix for containers

Slow-release shrub fertilizer

Clippings tarp

Bamboo garden canes

Soft garden twine

Wire topiary frame

Two-handed hedge shears