Juniper's are really common landscape
plants in Colorado and they're fantastic
because they're really drought tolerant
and they're very resilient so what we're
going to talk about today is how to keep
junipers and bounds if they're starting
to grow onto a sidewalk or get too big
for his face the old way of doing that
was to get out the hedge trimmers and
give them a very sheer in appearance and
that's not really a good way to approach
it because it kind of takes away from
the natural beauty of the Juniper so
what I'd like to show you is another way
that you can prune junipers to reduce
their size you can see that this juniper
is starting to grow onto the sidewalk
and it's kind of getting time to think
about starting to cut it back so it
doesn't create a tripping hazard now
it's tempting to think that what you
would do is just cut it right along the
edge of the sidewalk and to maintain a
natural appearance that's really not a
good idea so instead what you want to do
is look along the branch and find a good
strong piece that's coming off from the
side like this one and cut right above
that so now you can see that it doesn't
even look like we cut that particular
branch we can do that again on this one
and so we'll take this one back up right
to here now what this does is it creates
a more natural appearance and rather
than cutting everything on the same
plane we want to put some a little bit
farther out cut some a little bit
farther in so it creates that natural
appearance here's a good one
just clip that right there it's nice
maybe this one will take a little bit
farther back okay this one will leave a
little farther out maybe we can take
this one quite a bit farther back really
maintains the beauty of the Juniper
let's go a little bit farther down okay
so this branch is starting to encroach
on the sidewalk and what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to actually take this one
quite a ways back and see this top
growth has now covered over that cut so
you can't see that I made a pretty
significant pruning cut there
this one's kind of coming out so once
again I'll I'll cut it right above fresh
sprig okay here's another one cut that
back maybe I'll I'll go ahead and take
this one all the way back to the main
branch see how I'm kind of tucking my
cuts under this this top growth it's
very attractive
now this one's starting to come out and
I'm going to go ahead and follow this
all the way back to the main branch and
cut just to remove that give the
sidewalk a little bit more space cut
this one go ahead take it back a little
farther one problem with junipers is
oftentimes people will cut all the way
back the hole all the branches all the
way back to this this brown wood and if
you do that the junipers will never
recover so you certainly want to always
make your cuts up to a nice green sprig
now let's take a look and see what it
wants you can see we've brought the
Juniper back a little bit from the
sidewalk and still maintain its natural
appearance