So we have these two bushes out front of our house that the previous home owners decided to let wild. We believe they're dense spreading yew and while they add color to the front of the house, they're massive. About 6' x 6' each, 3' tall.

Does anyone have experience chopping these things? They're supposedly hardy plants, so we're inclined to take them back all the way to 2'x2' each - is that something we can just hack away at, or do we need to do it slowly, or what time of year?

If no one knows, no big deal - they just don't fit in our current landscape plan - and they're taking over my lawn (you can imagine the disdain!!)

Thanks!

The claim is that it takes very well to being chopped back, but never to bare branch wood (like any other shrub although I confess to violating that on some that I know will send new branches off the main...yew I don't know about).

This might help you: Click here for more information

My parents' house which was built in the 60's had these, as did every other house in their neighborhood, planted as foundation plantings all the way around the house. When I updated their landscaping in the '90s, I chopped three of them down from about 4-5' tall to within a couple feet of the ground. By the end of the following year, they had grown all of their needles back on the remaining wood and had a much more desirable 'free-form' look -- as opposed to the perfect 4'x4' cube they were previously sculpted to. They are still a healthy part of their 'new' landscaping to this day. Granted, these were very well established plants and their root system was accordingly very highly developed.

The rest of the yews got wrapped a couple times with a hefty chain around the bottom of the trunk. The ends of the chain were then attached to the hitch of a truck. Pluck! That was the end of them.

I think the key is cutting real low. New shoots should come out quickly with that large root system.