NOV 11 - Hedge Your Boundry

If you want a garden boundary that looks good and is green in all senses of the word, then you can’t go far wrong with a hedge. Hedges are generally grown from container-grown plants (bought at any time of year, with well-established root system and living in a pot) or from ‘bare root’ plants which are perfect bought at this time of year and planted straight away. Bare root hedging is not an option available for every type of plant. Some garden centres offer it, but generally for the freshest plants and widest selection you’re better going to a hedging specialist nursery. These plants are often quite small, but great value and soon romp away, providing you with a low-cost good looking hedge.

So which should you choose? Here are some of which I’m especially fond:
Hornbeam:
This deciduous tree makes great classic hedging and in the autumn leaves turn an attractive bright yellow. It’s long-lived and once established makes a good hedge for roosting birds. It’s easy to keep trimmed and dense, its only downside being few leaves remain in winter. Does well in sun or part shade.

Beech:
A tough and hardy deciduous tree that makes a great hedge. Great kept neatly clipped for a formal look. Although it does shed its leaves, they turn a wonderful tan-brown towards the end of autumn and a high percentage remain on the plants until new leaves appear in springtime.

Native Hedging (including hawthorn, wild rose, guilder rose, blackthorn):
Perfect for a more rural look with lots of wildlife. Native hedging is often available as a mixed selection of suitable plants, all the above planted randomly along the hedge line make a great mixed deciduous hedge which will provide shelter, nesting sites and nectar from the attractive flowers and food from the various hips and berries.

Yew:
Perfect for a more formal hedging. It’s evergreen and its narrow dark green leaves make a great backdrop for plants within the garden. Unlike most other evergreen hedging, if it’s allowed to grow out of hand, it does respond well to being cut back quite hard. Avoid damp sites and remember that although the end result looks great, this is one of the slower growing hedging plants.

Prunus laurocerasus:
Also known as the cherry laurel, it’s a large-leafed evergreen which forms a very good, dense hedge. It produces small, pretty white flowers, but if you clip the hedge regularly you rarely see many of them. The leaves are a light, glossy green, avoiding the sombre feeling some evergreen hedges can bring.

Thuja plicata:
Known as the western red cedar, the variety ‘Atrovirens’ makes a particularly good evergreen hedge. It grows reasonably rapidly and is often used when one would like some aspects of a Leyland hedge but wouldn’t want its potential to get out of hand. The foliage produces a gorgeous pineapple aroma when crushed.

Berberis including B.darwinii:
Another very dense and attractive hedge, deciduous, semievergreen or evergreen depending on which you choose. Berberis has plenty of spines too so is often used in ‘defensive’ planting. The flowers are small but very pretty in shades of orange and yellow. Avoid very wet soils.

Euonymus japonica:
A great hedging plant with evergreen leaves, many with attractive variegations bringing extra colour and interest to the boundary. Avoid a wet soil and choose a sunny or partly shaded spot, making sure that the soil does not become too dry in summer.

Photinia x fraseri:
This evergreen shrub makes an interesting hedge and if you choose a variety such as ‘Red Robin’, you can enjoy flamboyant red patches of colour throughout the hedge in the spring as new growth is wonderfully coloured. Does best in a fertile soil with plenty of sun or part shade.

By Pippa Greenwood

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