Managing laurels - what's going to be best?

[Needtosoundoffandbreathe]

We've got quotes for different ways of dealing with the very overgrown laurels which are up a bank from our drive up to the lawn. It's a big area. Would you go for thinning them out or cutting them down to knee height?

They're way too high and unmanageable for us as things stand currently and blocking light in areas of the garden. Interested to know if anyone has experience of managing laurels and has had to make similar decisions.

We have a laurel hedge (cherry laurel). It's now 12 years old and would be about 20 feet high if we didn't manage it. We reduce it every year so it stays about 6ft. So I'd probably cut down rather than thin out, but it depends on the layout of your garden and what you need to achieve.

We keep all our hedges, privet and Laurel and fir to about 8ft to keep them manageable. I wouldn't have them shorter than 6ft as I like the privacy they give, and the g birds love nesting in them.

Hard to say without a photo - how unmanageable are they?

I’d cut down to 1.5m in the winter. Not now because you’ll disturb the nesting birds.

Thank you everyone. We were leaning towards cutting down to knee height. There aren't any nesting birds currently in the area we're looking at getting sorted out.