Help! I think I may have been a bit heavy handed pruning my Beech hedge

[30shousecat]

I went to give my very well established beech hedge a bit of a trim today but ended up chopping it back quite a lot as it was quite overgrown and out of shape. I have now been googling and realised that I shouldn't have done this heavy a prune until the winter. Am I likely to have killed/done serious damage to my hedge? I only did one side if that makes any difference?

Bump. The more I look at it, the more I think 'argh what have I done' ....

Hard pruning can be carried out either in winter or mid-summer, so you should be ok. Did you do the sunny side or the shady side?

I did mine two weeks ago. It's now madly sprouting new growth.

We had a beech tree that was cut down in spring. The stump is now full of leaves. I think it’s pretty hard to kill it once it’s well established but it can take time to come back.

Thanks for the replies. Erm....it's the side which faces South I think? Not sure if pruned is even the right term as it involved chopping back some branches.....

There's a rough rule that winter pruning stimulates growth but summer doesn't, so with fruit trees, prune in winter to stimulate new growth, but if you want to keep size of a mature tree in check, you can prune in summer - I think that's the reason for doing major regenerative pruning in winter, rather than because the tree will die if you do it in summer. So it may not come back in time for this winter but should start growing back in the spring.

Thanks mere, that's really helpful. I actually do want to keep the size of the hedge in check as it's way too tall at the moment (after the hard pruning it's still approximately 8 feet tall) so the timing could turn out to be a blessing!

If you want to reduce the height, you need to cut it about 2ft shorter than you want, to allow for the seasonal growth. But double check all this. I'm not a big hedge person. I've got a 4m length of Symphoricarpus (snowberry) which I hate because it needs at least 3 cuts a year, then a long length of hawthorn which I'm trying to convert into a less prickly mixed hedge by adding in any tree seedlings I find in the garden - it's beginning to have results - there's now wild roses and honeysuckle in there, and I found a little cluster of hazelnuts.