Hedging suggestions

[Jtothelo]

I am a little lost and inexperienced with gardening. I recently had my garden hard landscaped as it was a completely overgrown, untouched and full of old paving, rubbish etc when I bought this property 2.5 years ago. I now have a neat but rather baron garden, facing south, with east on left and west on right looking out to the garden. I don’t want to enlist a landscaper as I want to try to learn and do this myself. My neighbours have a conifer hedge which the previous owners hacked away on my side so now it is half dead. I have two adventurous dogs so have wire fencing up to 4.5ft against the conifers. I asked the hard landscapers to leave a gap where I would plan to plant a hedge or something to hide the wire and dead conifers. I have tried googling this but all that seems to come up are box hedging, conifers and Laurel. Do you have any suggestions or inspiration for me please?

It's going to be hard to establish any shrubs right up against the conifers - they suck all the goodness and water out of the soil.

If it were me, I'd build a raised bed in all or part of that border (effectively a bottomless box, but put some root membrane at the bottom to stop the conifers' roots coming up) and plant some climbers or a mixed shrub border to hide the fence.

If I understood right, that is a west facing border, so quite a lot of plants will do well there. I would stick to ones with shallower roots, so they do well in your raised bed. You can make it a mixture of evergreens and deciduous. In a raised bed you can tailor the soil, so you would be able to grow anything you fancy.

Lonicera Nitida, lovely small leaved hedge, really easy to trim, get the more yellowy variety, not sure of name but it's a lovely bright green and faster growing than the darker green standard type. Will easily grow to 4/5 ft in time but easy to keep trimmed too. Frost/snow won't kill it. I like Grisilinia too but I lost a lot of it in snow some years ago so depends on where you live. It's a quick grower too and soft easily trimmed but much bigger leaves than the Lonicera.

I wouldn't go with any of the 3 options mentioned, conifers - too bit and if you get a slow growing small will take forever to cover where you want, Laurel - good option as a hedge but for a bigger space I think, grows high and thick and needs controlling, Box - too slow for my liking and prone to Box Blight. In fact the one I mentioned Lonicera is known as poor man's Box, the cheaper easier alternative! 😁

Thank you, you’ve already taught me something I didn’t know 😊. I hadn’t thought or known about the “greedy” conifer roots but makes sense now you’ve pointed that out.

While an existing conifer hedge does make it hard to dig and plant things so the suggestion of a raised bed is good I'm not sure how greedy the conifers are. I have a hedge of grisellinia planted right in front of a hedge of leylandii (the hated ones!) Basically the hedge looks like it's half grisellinia and half conifer as it's grisellinia up to about 4/5ft then conifer up to 10ft, the hedging was planted a couple of feet at most from trunk of trees and hedge is growing fine. It only runs for a short length of maybe 10/12ft and is part of a semi circular shape of hedging around a patio but if anything it is the conifer that has suffered as where the hedge is blocking it's light the green on the trees does not grow but the hedge covers it. OPs next door trees are already bare at the bottom so this won't be an issue.

Why a hedge? Why not a shrub border? That could have all sorts of shapes and undulations which will soften the rectangular lines of the hard landscaping. It also gives you the option of variety e.g. different leaf shapes and/or colours, shrubs that flower at different times so you have year-round interest, etc.

You already have a bench there so you know it's a good place to sit. What about incorporating an arbour?

The area you are talking about is near seating so think about scent, too.

Two plants that are really great for hedges are blackthorn and hawthorn. They look quite similar with masses of small white flowers, but one flowers in March/April and the other flowers in May/June so you get a longer period with flowers.

In the autumn, hawthorns have bright red berries and blackthorns have blue berries (they're used to make sloe gin).

A hedge alternating blackthorns and hawthorns looks great and they grow very easily.

You can also mix in some other species as well, dogwood is often a good choice as well, that has white flowers and very dark, almost black, berries.

Other good species to include are elder with white flowers and dark reddish/purple berries. The flowers are used to make eg elderflower cordial and the berries can also be used to make cordial or jam.

Or maybe something like hazel which has lots of catkins in the winter and you can sometimes get hazelnuts as well.

The cheapest way to buy hedging plants is what is called "bare root". As the name suggests, these do not come in a pot of compost but are literally the plant with bare roots.

These are generally sold November to March/April so you would either need to buy some straight away or it would probably be best to wait until October/November when the nurseries start selling them again.

Bare root plants are going to cost you from less than £1 each up to around £2. In contrast, you're probably looking at something like £8-10 for a plant in a pot.

The £2 plants are often a year older than the £1 plants so you're usually paying for a slightly bigger plant.

Most people say that for a hedge you need at least three plants per metre or to get a more dense hedge (that will more quickly hide the chicken wire) then go for five plants per metre staggering each one.

For example, from your photo, the first plant would be near the wire, the next would be near the border of your patio and then the next one would be near the wire again and so on all the way down the length of the hedge.

So the cost would be anywhere from £3 per metre (3 plants @ £1 each) up to £10 per metre (5 plants @ £2 each)

Also, I would suggest keeping the upper parts of the conifers regularly cut back every couple of years as well until your hedge is a similar height.

EDIT

Forgot to say, don't forget that hedges grow outwards as well as upwards. So every year you will need to trim your hedge if any of the branches start coming out too far, this will also encourage the plant to become more dense and bushy.

I would plant pyracantha in tubs along the edge. It is totally undemanding, has a small root system and lovely berries. Every year you can hard prune it to form a neat hedge..

Avoid anything that has rampant growth, if you want low maintenance.

Hello Jtothelo,

With such established conifers in your neighbour’s garden you are going to struggle to get any kind of plants growing on your side as there roots will be well under the boundary of your garden. The bare patches are unlikely to grow back as conifers do not regenerate when cut back so hard.

My suggestion would be to consider putting up a fence to screen the current view. You can get some quiet ornate fences.

As this is your sitting area in front of the fence you could grow fragrant summer climbers such as sweet peas trained up the fence in long fairly deep troughs possibly made out of pine railway sleepers. If you had big enough permanent troughs you could include some plants to creat interest at other times of the year.

If you do put some kind of fence in get it as close to your boundary to avoid any loss of your garden should your neighbour remove the conifers and try and take any land behind your fence.

Happy gardening
TheSustainableGardener

I'm very slow to plant anything with thorns if you are having to cut it and trim yourself, fine is hiring someone to do it or if letting it grow kind of wild. I have Berberis hedge and while it's lovely it's hell trying to gather up cuttings as the thorns are vicious! No glove that you can work in is good enough.