Pollarding yew

[Rhubarbgarden]

We've recently moved house and the new place has a very old yew hedge at the front, between the house and the road. There's no pavement and only approx 2m between house and hedge, so it's an important screen. However, it's been badly let go over the years, so the bottom half is bare trunk and the top half is overly wide - like a mushroom. When sitting in my lounge I see car wheels whizzing past through the bottom half. The hedge is approx 2m high.

The RHS advice is to pollard it - to chop it down to six inches and let it start again. I'm up for doing that - I don't mind it looking crap for a while if we get a decent top to bottom thick hedge in the long run.

My question is has anyone done this? Did it work? Did the hedge survive? How long did it take to grow back to a decent height?

Thanks.

I have no idea about the pollarding, but we were at a NT garden a while back where they were cutting back the yew and the cuttings were being taken away by a drug company because they are used in making cancer drugs. Maybe they would want your yew cuttings too?

Ooh that'd be nice. I shall look into that. Which garden was it? They might be able to let me know how to go about it.

A quick google sufficed actually. It turns out it's only annual hedge clippings that are useful, so whole pollarded shrubs wouldn't be any good sadly. But nice idea!

gosh, I love yew, but I would be very wary of taking it back to 6", it grows so slowly. Could you screen at the bottom, with temporary screening (eg bamboo screening) then plant younger yew (or in deed cutting from the existing hedge) at the bottom? (Disclaimer I am a useless gardener, I just know what I. Want it to look like!

I love yew too

The RHS claim that if it's fed it won't take too long to regrow. But I'm sceptical, that's why I'm keen to see if anyone has done it. I don't think cuttings would take underneath a hedge unfortunately - too much shade. I thought about ferns for screening but they are deciduous and really I'd like the smartness of a solid well-clipped hedge.

When they say 'too long'... do they mean in relation to yew growth speed? It's ridiculously slow, isn't it?

Not so slow. We grew a metre/half hedge from small plants in three years: water and clip.

Just checked: the advice seems to be do it at the right time of year, and don't over do it. Google: there's lots of advice out there.