hedges

[Bear]

hornbeam,beech,feild maple or good old blackthorn....plus with the blck thorn it`s a joy to hedge lay with. try SELECT or Farm Forestry.. good luck

[MattyF]

I recon yew too! if you get decent plants they will grow suprisingly quick!

[Treeworld]

Hi phil,

 

Go to the nursery just the other side of blean. They have all the hedging plants needed, self grown in blean so you can give them the sustainable source etc etc. I planted a mixed hedge in the pub garden of the hare and hounds as you pass thro Blean. Used hawthorn, beech and hazel. Looks great will take a couple of seasons to estabilish a screen. If you are going to do it now then you will have to buy potted plants as out of season for bareroot. Potted option is far more costly than bareroot. IMO you should wait till november when you will be able to purchase the whips at a good price from this nursery, you should get 10% off list price too.

 

I agree with previous comments on yew, the thing is the cost of yew, what is the budget per metre for planting?

 

Give me a call if you like.

 

Dave

[Giles Hill]

If you're using native hedging, the best bet is to base your species mix on what's in the local field hedgerows and stick to that.

 

i.e. your hedge mix will be based on what is best suited to the area, rather than a random mix of 'native' plants.

 

Also base the mix with a strong emphasis on one or two plants and use these for 70 or 80% of the mix, then make the remaining 20 or 30% out of a number of 'other' species.

 

Looking at the hedges around here, it might be 80% hawthorn to provide the 'framework' of the hedge and 20% of 'other' - eg 5% each of hazel, dogwood, plum and blackthorn.

 

Or... 50% hawthorn, 30% field maple to provide the framework and the other 20% made up of secondary shrubs.

 

The absolute key thing is to keep the weeds down, particularly in the first year. I prefer not to use spiral guards, because they allow weeds to grow at the base of the hedging plants and the hedge can take a while to get away.