How hard can boxwwoods be pruned?

[DEHattaway]

curious how hard boxwoods can be pruned; can you prune back to leafless woody stems? I know person in my local bonsai club said he did so with European boxwood(collected I believe). I wanted to know if I can prune a asian boxwood to near the trunkline which is about 3-6" away from the nearest leaves. I've aready pruned it a far bit this spring and it's just started sending new growth so it'll probably be pruned later(perhaps next spring). The woody stems are about 1/2" in diameter. it's a fairly decent sized 5 gallon asian boxwood I got this spring which can probably be pruned from it's initially 3-5' size to very nearly shohin size with a 2" and 1-2" long branches rather than 12+" trunk if it will bud back from those bare stems.

 

[BrianBay9]

Often times you can prune past the last leaf on a healthy boxwood and get back budding, but it's a risk. Sometimes they won't back bud.

 

[DEHattaway]

This boxwood had a little hickup after I first purchased it I think due to slight miswatering and lost alot of older leaves but otherwise was and is in great health it was also relatively cheap though I'd be hard pressed to find material this large again short of collecting or looking into landscape nurseries with larger material. it has already budded out since my initial pruning about 1-3" so it has used some of it's winter stored energy but not all of it would it be worth it to prune it all the way back like I want now or should I wait? I'm just concerned about losing it if I cut it back that hard...

 

[Shibui]

All Boxwood are real survivors. They will usually bud on bare wood if forced to by hard pruning but very little in life is absolutely certain.
If it has regrown 1-3" shoots those new leaves will be replacing any stored energy they used up while growing. There's usually plenty of reserves in a strong plant anyway.
No location in your profile so hard to guess what growing season you might have so more difficult to give good advice. Short season I would probably delay pruning until next year. Longer season I would be happy to cut back if there's still plenty of growing time to bud and grow before winter.