How hard can I prune Cherry Laurel?

[Ian]

We've got some cherry laurel planted down the side of our back garden (planted before we moved in and it's too expensive & slow to replace for now). It's really gotten out of hand, so I'm going to prune it tomorrow before it gets out of control.

It's around 9ft high and is far too wide. Last year I just pruned it back to where it was when we moved in, but it needs to be pruned back significantly - to around 6ft in height and so much off the side that it would probably be bare trunk!

Is that too much? I know that laurel is pretty hardy (I can't stop it popping up all over the place!), so I was hoping that I'll be fine.

 

[firelily99]

June is a good time to prune. Try not to prune too many leaves as this can cause the laurel to look untidy. Pick out branches that are divided evenly over the plant. With a bigger bush like you have you only have to cut it back around 30 to 50 cm. Make the cuts just above the leaves, new branches will form in that area. Also try not to make the trimmed branches uniformly cut or it will end up looking unnatural.

 

[Ian]

Thanks firelily99, as timing would have it, I've just got back in from pruning them now and I've had to take some of them back to bare stumps . Only 1/4 done so far, but I've filled our green bins full for this week! It does look less than ideal, but they were so overgrown I've not had much choice - I do hope they'll be ok. That said, now that I've taken them back so far, I'm tempted to pull them up and plant an alternative after all!