Spring Shaping of Rear Foundation Boxwoods

Back in 2017, I showed part of our landscape plant that was just outside of our kitchen window that called for a variety of perennials and some shrubs including Green Velvet Boxwoods.  You can see the plan here in this post from October 2017. 

Here's a look at that portion of the plan:

The plan called for four Green Velvet Boxwood plants.  You can see in the photo at the top of this post that we indeed, planted four of them.  I ended up staggering them a little differently than the plan called for, but they're mostly in the same spot.  The reason for clustering them more closely to the window well is to fit in a spot for our grill.  This [Garden Diary] post can be found in the feed over on Hornbeam Hill. 

This post is to talk about shaping of these boxwoods.  We have a set of these in our front yard beds directly in front of our porch that you can see in this post that we're trying to let grow a bit.  I'd like them to get larger, but the ones in back?  I took the pruners to them already both to try to shape them into more ball-like shapes but also to prune off some of the winter browning.  If you look at the photo at the top of this post, you can see that a couple of these managed the winter better than others with the one in front having more brown on it than the rest.  I shaped these before I began the backyard cleanup, but I think the pros take a sheet or tarp and put it around the boxwoods to kind of catch all the clippings and make cleanup easier. 

Where do I want these to go?  To start, I want to keep them small and manicured because they're so close to the patio.  Eventually?  Into something akin to the Jacques Wirtz 'cloud' hedge.  Curvy and cloud-like, but still refined and pleasant to look at while filling up the space in an elegant way.  Imagine this area taking on that 'cloud' look, while the yews taking on more of a curvy hedge that you see at the top of this post with the walking path of the backyard running behind the yew hedge.