Identify this hedge please!

[ampere]

Sorry no photo- I will actually try and get one loaded BUT:

It's a 'municipal planting' as hedging screening our drive from the road, planted by the council (new house owners). The main question apart from What is it, is Can I prune it back hard? It's overgrowing our carparking by a good meter and encorages ivy beneath it. And yes, at least 1 to 1.5m of it is on our property! It spreads out into the 4m wide nature strip between our drive and the road. It's not particularly attractive but it's not planted on our property so we can't root it out and start again. In fact, it's planted 20cms inside the council's land but a laurel hedge the other side of it has forced 90% of the growth of this hedge out over our drive!

It's a shrub:
Evergreen
1.5-2m tall
Leaves are dark green, tough and shiny, 5 to 8cm long with a holly-like serrated edge but flatter than holly leaves AND with more indentations/spikes than a holly. It looks like it had berries on it sometime over the past year as the fluffy stalks are left in places.

The inner trunk and branching stems are gnarled, woody and a bit contorted -and greyish brown. They are about 4cm diameter at ground level at most.

It's not particularly dense in that the leaves only cover the outside facing the drive- if I prune it back a foot, it'd be bare branches!

WOULD it regrow denser and more compact (and further back off my drive?!) or would I be forever left with the spiky ends of bare branches potentially jabbing me as I get out of my car?

Mahonia?

picture

Is it my bush? That needs a bit of a trim, it's getting rather gnarled and overgrown atm, lack of attention you see. The less attention it gets, the more gnarled and bitter it becomes.

Bingo!

Many thanks! It is indeed a mahonia!

ALTHOUGH... I see the leaves on mine aren't paired. I will get a photo sorted!

I think it is a mahonia from your description of the stem, as well as the leaves.

Actually, a mahonia's a great plant, and you're in luck having it as municipal hedging.

It sounds like it's a little unhappy over something (bad pruning? lack of nourishment? in the shade and growing to the light? too much competition from the laurel?) as it should have been flowering this winter or be about to flower - it has lovely sprays of yellow flowers with a sweet scent (if you've got a good variety).

Check to see if it's got flower buds coming, and then prune it back hard in March if it hasn't (look online for general pruning instructions for shrubs). It will regenerate from the old stem okay, although if it's feeling a bit sad, it might take a little while. I'd look at giving it some blood fish and bone or something similar.

However, if the laurel is growing that large and quickly, you could take the mahonia out altogether - but mahonia is a better plant than laurel, I'd say, and well worth keeping for the flowers and scent at a miserable time of year.

www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/3295804/How-to-grow-Mahonia.html

OK, I now have a profile with some pictures!

As you might see the leaves are paired so you get two leaves opposite each other ie at 180 degrees, then the next two, but they're at 90 degrees to the fist pair. All leaves also face upwards from the stem, not 'flat' to it like the mahonia seems to be.

What do you now think?

Looks like mahonia to me. Personally I hate the stuff and have found from bitter experience that it's practically impossible to kill it. Prune at will!

bump for today's readers?

are u sure its not olearia - daisy bush?

Could it be this osmanthus sounds like theyoften get used as hadging plants, and they are sometimes called False Holly.

hadging?? hedging (sorry)

No, I still think from the photo (though very small) it's a mahonia. I saw one looking very similar near my office today.

Just chop madly at it, looking at the photos I don't think it matters whatever you do.

Sorry but the photos is awful.
Can you take a better one, with more detail?
Does it flower?

I will try and get a better photo - need a bit of bleddy SUN!! I will also look at some more images of mahonia.

I'm pretty sure it's not an olearia because that is an attractive plant and this- well, isn't really!

Thanks, all.

You have to look at photos of scrubby low-growing mahonia, not nice shrub like mahonias.

But honesty, just go and cut it, it's fine.

It does look like Mahonia, does this help?

images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=mahonia%20aquifolium&rlz=1R2RNTN_enGB339&um=1&ie=UTF-8& sa=N&tab=wi

If you really want to know what it is (I'm still pretty sure it's ), and you're an RHS member, you can post a spring off to the plant identification service with a request for pruning info!

I think it's mahonia repens:

www.roseville.ca.us/images/EU/cash4grass/creeping_mahonia.jpg

Grendelsmum, I think I will just proceed and chop it back as you suggest! I'm 90% sure the council wouldn't have planted anything either expensive or tender!

Would you reckon mid-ish March would be best? Before it swings into Spring Action?

Thanks for the feedback and help.