Read our other guides on taking care of trees here on the Green.

Clip each dead branch off at the point it leaves the trunk. Avoid leaving a stub that can rot. If only part of a branch is dead, diseased or damaged, prune it back to a lateral branch at least 6. Aug 22, Side Note: arborvitae, genus thuja, is a coniferous tree, so it doesn’t really have leaves but flat needles that fan out from a central stem. However, they look like leaves from far away.

Arborvitae do not tolerate heavy pruning. So, you need to pick your reductions or removals wisely to not overstress the tree. Jan 05, Prune your thuja preferably at the end of summer or at the beginning of spring. Feel free to prune severely because thuja tends to grow very, very fast. A heavy pruning end of August is enough to keep this growth under control. That is also the season where sap descends and so it will slow the thuja’s growth a bit.

If you have bare brown wood, those branches will more than likely not grow back.

Oct 08, It’s best to trim thuja trees between early spring and mid-summer; the specific timing depends upon how hard you need to cut back its foliage. To maintain an ornamental shape, remove overgrowth in the spring and then wait until mid-summer to fine-tune the form.

This timing allows the arborvitae an opportunity to put on new growth before treedelimbing.bar: Jeffrey Douglas. Arborvitae, known botanically as Thuja, is a genus of needle evergreen trees and shrubs belonging to the cypress family of plants. Like all coniferous evergreens, arborvitae require very little and infrequent pruning, but can tolerate some trimming for grooming or shaping purposes.

When the arborvitae is badly overgrown, you should trim it in stages to avoid cutting down to bare wood, as the tree cannot.

Feb 06, These evergreens can be pruned in late winter to early spring. Dec 15, Topping Off and Pruning Arborvitae. Evergreen arborvitae (Thuja) trees and shrubs are members of the Cypress family and thrive in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3. Sep 21, Thuja Green Giant trees are easy to grow, tolerant to drought, and insect- and disease-resistant. With little work from the gardener, the species grow in uniformity and create privacy screens.

Remove dead, diseased or weak branches as soon as you spot them. Find the point where the limb connects to a healthy one and clip it at the V-shaped joint.