hello, please excuse the total newb - I’ve never planted or gardened a thing in my life. However, my wife and I bought our first home 2 years ago and I used both of the last two summers to wrestle control of our 200’ deep yard and planted in April 2018 just shy of 100 Portuguese laurels along 3 sides of our property to eventually form a privacy hedge. Each are space about 2.75’ apart and each were about 10” tall, now some are over 24” but most are around 14-18”. I simply need some help in knowing: 1) when to prune them (now? Early summer?) 2) how best to prune them to form a hedge and not individual trees. I’ve read that Portuguese laurel can be hedged as thin as 18-24” and I hope to keep them tight to the chain link fence line to eventually hide the fence and ultimately grow to approx 8’ tall for privacy but I also only have a 50’ wide yard so I hope to contain them to a max of 24” of encroachment. (Summary: I want to encourage them to spread laterally along the fence to become one hedge, to avoid allowing them to come too far into the yard and to encourage them to grow to 6-8’ tall privacy wall). Cheers. John