Those are yews and they look good - they dont look overgrown either. Those hedges could grow even more vertically and provide even more privacy for those folks (or items!) on the verandah. Yews are slow growers and they can be pruned back but will take a while to fill in. A compromise might be to add interest by leaving the end plants (thats four of them; two either end of your two small "hedges") and prune back the tops of the middle of the hedge. You could interplant between the (temporarily) bare bushes with flowers. I used this approach with a foundation planting of old maxi rhodies - rather than pulling them out I cut them back a bit and interplanted with new small hybrid rhodies - as a result I needed fewer new material and it saved me money. After a year or two it looked terrific and the old rhodies were just a hardly noticeable part of the "visual" and I gradually removed them altogether. In my case what I would do now if I had to do that over would be to interplant with Otto Luykens laurel. This is a low habitat laurel and its easy to shear as well. If you remove the yews this somewhat narrow house will look unbalanced initially - most importantly what kind of surface is there BEHIND the yews. Whatever that is you will be looking at that surface - probably just rough concrete - full in the face for a long time while any replacement plants grow.

All I have for it is the knee jerk name of Ponytails. Gag me with a meathook! I would love to know the parentage of the hybrid, if it is a hybrid. I found a picture of a large specimen on a flicker site and sent an inquiry about the plant , but have heard nothing back yet. The plant was by a old mexican market in a small town somewhere in Mexico, I know not where. The site it was on was a Mexican photographer/ biologist site. Maybe it is NOT a hybrid. When I got the plant, It had just arrived from the growers at a nursery. On my way out, 5 people saw it and ran , yes ran, to the C&S section . It was not there long. I already have a line of people begging for a pad. It will never get large at this rate. Matter of fact it will disappear into nothingness in its pot. I need to do some experiments to find out how small one can cut a pad to get a plant off of a cutting. This post was edited by wantonamara on Wed, Oct 9, 13 at 13:37

Chris G., if I can grow them in shade they should be fine in some shade because you are warmer than my area. I have a really pyramid one that is orange in the spring and yellow late summer. A really pretty one that is red and it blooms small yellow flowers in late Spring. I like them I do not remember the names I picked them up at my local nursery and they are at least a plant the deer do not eat. I have so much trouble trying to garden with all the critters.

Where do you live? What kind of grass do you have? 80 degrees is not warm enough to cause a problem. What is your watering schedule? How often and for how long do you water? Top dressing with compost was the best advice available from the 1930s to the early 2000s. Now it is recognized by a growing number of people as the slowest and most expensive way to improve the lawn. Compost is a pile of depleted organic matter. If you want active organic matter, use a real organic fertilizer. Many people use Milorganite for several reasons. I like alfalfa pellets, soybean meal, corn meal, or corn gluten meal as raw organic fertilizer products available everywhere at your local feed store. Not all of those products will be available but one of them will be (alfalfa pellets are also rabbit chow). In my area the cost of compost delivered is about $75 per 1,000 square feet. Organic fertilizer is more like $5 per 1,000. Apply at a rate of 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You can use is safely as often as you can afford (every day or every month or every year). Here is a picture showing how organic fertilizer works. Mrmumbles posted that picture many years ago. He applied alfalfa pellets in mid May and took the picture in mid June. You can see the improved density, color, and growth. This picture has convinced lots of people to at least try organic fertilizer. Unless you live in a brick producing area, the topsoil your contractor used was unlikely to be clay. It might have been poor soil, but not clay. Only a soil test will tell. The best soil test lab in the US is Logan Labs in Ohio. Their $25 test will tell us and you all you need. Post the results here and get a good review of it. You might test both areas if you think the soil quality is considerably different from one to the other. In the mean time, spray your soil with 3 ounces of shampoo per 1,000 square feet. Use any clear shampoo - no additives like conditioners. Follow that with 1/2 to 1 inch of water and give it 3 weeks to take effect. After that when you water deeply or it rains, the soil should be noticeably softer to walk on. Do the fork or screwdriver test before and after to judge the effect. Test it several times. I did the test this weekend and got different results just a few inches apart. Once it is sprayed it should be soft when moist and very firm when dry between waterings. Adding new soil will not necessarily help. One problem with new soil is that it changes your drainage. You don't want to create a dam effect where the rainwater backs up into your house or basement. Water should drain away from the house for at least 10 feet. Another problem with new soil is that it will not be perfect, either. It will need the same $25 soil test to see what's wrong with it.