Looking to Hack shrubs
 

http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/...psjsmmd9y0.jpg

This is my front yard the evergreen shrubs IMHO are overgrown, particularly the one on the right. How deep can I hack into this with out killing. Looking to add perrenials potentially a Japanese maple.

Can I currently take it back past the foliage and have it survive?

Good lookin place. You can trim them as far back as there is foliage, but if go further it'll be a brown spot that may take a few seasons to recover if they recover. When they get to big, pulling and replanting new smaller shrub is the only option. They do transplant well. My neighbor took the pulled evergreens from my house and they're enormous now in his yard.
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Honest opinion...rip 'em out and start fresh. Too pretty of a house to be hiding behind them and fishsmith said you can only whack them back so far .......

Beautiful house - rip them out and replant with a variety of ornamentals to really dress up the front yard. I just resided my house and the workers were brutal on the shrubbery, so everything will be removed early next spring for replanting. Nothing tragic, since most of the shrubs were overgrown, having been there when we brought the house in the '70's.

shrubs that tall provide a place for mugger's or burglars to hide in

that said...
ANSWER
you have to keep the root mass bigger than the top growth
proportionally
or some of the top growth has to die off to
put it back in balance again...