I missed it, but it would bear repeating what you did,
@just.wing.it, to get so much back budding.
Well, honestly Oso, I'm still trying to nail it down myself... haha!
Let's see;
One of them that is really kicking ass this spring was bought as a landscape plant in September of '16, and immediately cut way down and styled.
Then the following spring, '17, I bare rooted it and got it into a decent substrate, in a big round flower pot.
I let it grow freely all of '17...by late June, I saw so many Backbuds that I was expecting a second flush of growth, but it held off until now....(also another one of mine, had similar treatment, also only one flush of growth, the season after major root work...that's one for the Taxus Resource Thread!... but I wanna see if I get 2 flushes on them this year, and beyond).
Here's the thread on it...
https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/apex-styling.24630/
The other one doing exceptionally well is a collected hedge that was chopped and dug up in '15 or '16...not sure exactly when...
I aquired it in spring of '17, being told that it was still recovering, and yews can often take several years to bounce back from collection.
So I didn't touch it in '17 just heavy Fertilizing and water.... I had planned for it to possibly just recover through this year too, but seeing how well it did last year, it pushed out a second flush of foot long shoots with mini side shoots!, I went ahead and worked the roots this spring.
I bare rooted it and cut away a bunch.
I aslo removed half of the foliage up top, in preparation for future dead wood feature.
Thread is here...
https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/it-yewsed-to-be-in-a-hedge-row.27489/
So, yeah...I'm still working out an good pruning schedule for these guys, but I'll say that they are certainly fun!