Pruning Heresy for Italian Cypress

Q. My Italian cypress are getting too tall. Can I top them to keep them smaller?

Here a homeowner "topped" their Italian Cypress to control its height. It works but it will increase the width of the tree through new growth to the sides rather than directly upward.

A. Topping trees is not a good idea but in this case it will work because underneath all that foliage is a central trunk. It’s not the best way to handle this dilemma but if it is done when the tree is smaller it will help prevent it from getting too tall. Removing several feet of the top this way is questionable.

            Remove the pointed top just below the height wanted. This keeps the tree’s height in check, but it will grow wider than if it were left alone. Hindsight is 20/20. It would have been better to realize these are 40 to 60-foot trees before buying or planting them.

Sometimes the top will die in Italian cypress from borers or spider mites. The top is dead. Removal of this debt growth and the removal of living growth on other trees at the same height will limit its maximum height but not its width.

            The bad pruning method is shearing the tree with a hedge shears. Shearing does prevent long “floppy branches” from developing but it causes other problems. Shearing increases the density of the tree in the outer few inches while the inside branches become naked. The inside of the tree gets darker and darker as shearing increases, and this prevents any greenery from forming.

Italian Cypress has such a dense canopy that anyone using a hedge shears to prune them has to be very careful not to cut into the brown area just an inch or so to the inside. This growth is very slow to grow back or doesn't grow back at all.

            Eventually any deep cuts past these three or four inches outside edge will expose the naked larger branches inside which have no greenery. None will develop from old wood on Italian cypress, so it won’t grow back. Worse than a bad haircut!