When should an arborvitae be pruned?
It is one of the few conifers that takes shearing well, but only within the green: cut back into the brown interior wood and it will not resprout, so a hedge sheared to the same line for a decade has no live foliage in reserve and simply cannot be reduced. Shear in late spring after the growth flush, again in midsummer if needed, and stop by late summer so new growth hardens before frost — never take a neglected overgrown row down hard in one pass.
Reading arborvitae before you cut
Read it by pattern. Uniform bronzing on the windward and south-facing sides after a cold open winter is winter burn and usually flushes back out by June; a sharp browse line with cleanly stripped twigs to about four feet up is deer, not disease; and one plant going fully brown while its neighbors stay green is almost always root rot in a wet pocket or a girdled stem, and that one is not recovering. Interior yellowing and shed in fall is just normal seasonal drop.
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