Robinia

[Bonkers Mad]

Hello 😊

Bit of background. I moved into my house 30 years ago. Right at the front was a horizontal stump where a tree had been cut down. Over the years the tree regrew into a beautiful robinia. About 10 years ago the trunk split during high winds and it had to be cut down again. Over the last 10 years the tenacious bugger has regrown from the original stump but all over this time and has become more of a hedge, which i love. I keep the sides cut back from the pavement but cant reach the top even with a ladder so when my neighbours fella offered to do the top last week i accepted. Today i realised he was outside doing it but she had taken it upon herself to take loads of the middle out. I'm fuming tbh. The whole point of allowing it to grow like that was for privacy from the street. My question is, will those lower branches grow? Or will it eventually fill out with leaves again next year. The original stump is actually on concrete so i cant even plant something in the gaping hole it's left 😭

Edited August 31 by Bonkers Mad

[Stere]

 

 

Its never gonna be a good dense nice looking hedge wrong species, but should thicken back up abit after a few yrs  & help hide what looks like  some plastic litter......

 

You could plant some othe stuff in the gaps yew or beech etc if you want a thicker hedge

 

[Stubby]

57 minutes ago, Bonkers Mad said:

Hello 😊

Bit of background. I moved into my house 30 years ago. Right at the front was a horizontal stump where a tree had been cut down. Over the years the tree regrew into a beautiful robinia. About 10 years ago the trunk split during high winds and it had to be cut down again. Over the last 10 years the tenacious bugger has regrown from the original stump but all over this time and has become more of a hedge, which i love. I keep the sides cut back from the pavement but cant reach the top even with a ladder so when my neighbours fella offered to do the top last week i accepted. Today i realised he was outside doing it but she had taken it upon herself to take loads of the middle out. I'm fuming tbh. The whole point of allowing it to grow like that was for privacy from the street. My question is, will those lower branches grow? Or will it eventually fill out with leaves again next year. The original stump is actually on concrete so i cant even plant something in the gaping hole it's left 😭

They do coppice readily . I had one on my front lawn ( it was a tree ) that eventually was touching the guttering . I felled it ( good fire wood by the way ) and within a couple of years it was back up to chest height .

[Mick Dempsey]

Coppice is an understatement. They create a forest. 
I’ll wager that’s rootstock from a Golden Frisia graft 

 

[Bonkers Mad]

23 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

I have no idea what that means 😂

I’ll wager that’s rootstock from a Golden Frisia graft 

 

 

[Bonkers Mad]

1 hour ago, Stere said:

 

 

Its never gonna be a good dense nice looking hedge wrong species, but should thicken back up abit after a few yrs  & help hide what looks like  some plastic litter......

 

You could plant some othe stuff in the gaps yew or beech etc if you want a thicker hedge

 

It was a nice dense hedge before today. There is some litter there that couldnt be seen before she massacred it so im gonna have to get in there and clear that out. As i said, it's concrete, or some other hard stuff so cant plant anything but there is a little sycamore there that i might just have to let grow in the space and keep it low 🤔

 

Edit to say the hard stuff is whatever the driveway is, to the left of the second pic. Pinkish knobbly stuff. I dont know what that is called 😂

 

Edit to add picture of this time last year

Edited August 31 by Bonkers Mad

[Bonkers Mad]

Couple more pics so you can see what i mean 1st pic is the horizontal stump that the 2nd pic trunk grew from. 3rd and 4th pics are the shoots that grew after the 2nd tree was felled. 5th is the width of it as a hedge

 

[Stere]

 

 

Hedges best to have a slight  trapezoid shape =  more light at bottom.

 

Yours is kind of upside down atm so idealy top needs narrowing to encourage lower down to sprout

 

Then  in few yrs time & if  trimmed lightly as it regenerates  (it  will branch more & get dense faster) it will return to how it looked before

 

 

 

Edited September 1 by Stere

[sime42]

Hedge batter.

[Bonkers Mad]

On 01/09/2024 at 09:56, Stere said:

 

 

Hedges best to have a slight  trapezoid shape =  more light at bottom.

 

Yours is kind of upside down atm so idealy top needs narrowing to encourage lower down to sprout

 

Then  in few yrs time & if  trimmed lightly as it regenerates  (it  will branch more & get dense faster) it will return to how it looked before

 

 

 

Thanks for that. They made a right mess of it didnt they?

She came to apologise with flowers and wine. I blew her off. I dont care if it's petty. Im off work on saturday so plan on taking it down a bit more and narrowing the top as suggested. I appreciate the advice. Thanks a lot 😊

[Steven P]

On 31/08/2024 at 18:30, Bonkers Mad said:

but there is a little sycamore there that i might just have to let grow in the space and keep it low 🤔

 

 

Hmmm.... good luck with that one... all it takes is a bad year or summer where you don't get to trim it as you might want to and it will be huge.