All About Hedges
This is an Excerpt from the Book called “Trees Shrubs & Hedges FOR YOUR HOME”. Continue reading to learn more about All About Hedges thanks to the author.
Hedge Basics and Fine Points
Hedges are living walls that add structure and organization to the garden. You can use them to enclose a garden room, as the backdrop for a flower border, to edge and outline a path, and to lead the eye to or from important features in the landscape. A low prickly hedge can discourage four-footed visitors. A dense mid-height hedge can disguise an ugly wire fence and block wind, noise, blown leaves, and debris. A tall hedge composed of trees or large shrubs can create a privacy screen and mark distant property boundaries. A hedge is also better than a solid wall as a windbreak because it filters the stream of air rather than blocking it completely, thus avoiding a turbulent wash of air over the top.
Designing Ideas
Whether high or low, a hedge can link the various parts of your property to one another and to your house. In designing a hedge, consider whether the architecture of the house and yard calls for a trim, formal look or something loose and less formal. A formal garden around a stone house in the Federal style, for example, is likely to be symmetrical with repeated planting patterns. The formal hedge would either run in straight lines with squared corners or be created symmetrically around a circle, an oval, or another geometric form. To maintain the clean edges and regular shape, you must trim a formal hedge at least twice a year. Good plants for a formal hedge include fine-textured evergreens, such as boxwood, yew, arborvitae, and privet.
The informal architecture of a modern house, on the other hand, would call for a more naturalistic line moving in sinuous curves and at irregular angles. Plants suited to informal hedges have a loose shape, rich texture, and often colorful flowers. Pyracantha and some roses make attractive unclipped hedges and require little pruning.
Besides linking to the property’s architectural style, a new hedge can tie into its surroundings if it is composed of a shearable or a slow-growing variety of an existing tree or shrub. For example, if the property includes tall Irish yews, a yew hedge would fit in nicely. Or you could place a close relative of your hedge plants nearby.
Although cheaper and easier to install than a masonry wall or a wooden fence, a hedge started from container-grown or balled-and-burlapped plants won’t be cheap and will take a few years to develop. But a good hedge should also be with you for a long time. If you choose your plants carefully and take good care of them, your hedge will grow more beautiful each year.
Hedge Plants
To be useful as a hedge, a tree or shrub should respond well either to shearing or- for informal hedges-to light pruning. Deciduous barberry and evergreen boxwood are familiar hedges shrubs, but other less-common plants also make beautiful hedges. For colors other than green, you might choose variegated holly land privet. Or select plants for their flowers and fruits. In general, you can use any plant with a natural habit that suits the eventual hedge shape and size you want to achieve or one with a shape and size that can be controlled by pruning. The hedge plants listed on are some of the best from which to choose.
By pruning or shearing, you can turn some large shrubs and even trees into hedges of a manageable size. But hedge plants will mature no matter how often they are clipped, and you should be mindful that some will outgrow their desired size within 10 years or so. A shearable large conifer, such as a hemlock or Leyland cypress, must retain some new growth every year to look good. Even if you keep cutting it back, the plant will eventually develop thick visible trunks and coarse branches at the bottom. At the stage, hedge plants can be renewed if cut back to within a foot of the ground and then allowed to regrow.
You may be tempted to choose fast-growing species, such as Leyland cypress, for quick results. But remember that hedges from slow-growing species, such as boxwood, will be denser and more attractive, and they will last longer and require less frequent and less aggressive clipping. If you need a screen or windbreak in a hurry, consider planting a row of fast-growing plants alongside your slow-growing hedge. They’ll quickly provide shelter and screening, and you can remove them when the hedge of choice becomes tall.
For hedges, foliage texture is as important as plant size. Choose fine-textured plants, such as yew, arborvitae, and boxwood, for a hedge that will be viewed close up. For a hedge that will be seen mainly from a distance, choose plants with bold structure and coarse leaves, such as Meserve hollies, fiery photinias, elegant cherry laurel, or European beech. Branch and foliage texture and density are especially important for barriers; dense, prickly plans, such as barberry, flowering, quince, holly, spruce, and the thorny rugosa roses, discourage two-footed and even four-footed visitors.
EVERGREENS
When you want the hedge to have a consistent year-round presence, evergreens are the best choice. Dwarf boxwoods, evergreen euonymus, and yew make compact 1-to 2-foot hedges. Midsize arborvitae, contoneaster, camellia, and pyracantha are among many that grow 4 to 10 feet tall. Tall hedges of evergreen trees, such as false cypress, Leyland cypress, and hemlocks, can reach 20 feet or more and can serve as windbreaks for exposed sites. Many of the most useful evergreens_ among them boxwoods, yews, and junipers_ are available in a variety of heights and shapes.
Shearable upright broad- leaved evergreens, such as the boxwoods and small-leaved hollies, and tall trim fine-leaved conifers, such as arborvitae and incense cedar, create hedges with a formal look. A softer and less formal look can be had with lightly pruned open-textured evergreens, such as the feathery Ptitzer-junipers, graceful eastern white pine, and fast-growing Canadian hemlock. (Note: hemlocks have been dying in the Northeast from the woolly adelgid; painstaking spraying of individual trees has met with some success). Yew and Leyland cypress work well in both formal and informal hedges. Try combining cultivars with subtly or strikingly different hues.
DECIDUOUS PLANTS
Through prized for their foliage and flowers, many deciduous hedge plants are attractive even after the leaves have fallen; in winter the dense twiggy branches and colorful fruits of roses and barberries look exquisite traced in snow and ice. And many deciduous hedge plants make lovely, loosely shaped midsize informal hedges without pruning: the graceful foliage of burning bush (Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’) holds its shape all season long and turns brilliant red in the fall.
FLOWERING AND MORE
Both evergreen and deciduous flowering plants make beautiful informal hedges. Although prized for the constancy of their green foliage, many broad-leaved evergreens also have attractive flowers. Cherry laurel’s fragrant green-white flower clusters shine against the dark green leaves. The list of plans on the opposite page offers more suggestions for hedges.
You can also combine species that have compatible cultural requirements. To create a graceful natural hedge that’s colorful all season long, try plants that flower at different times. Or mix flowering shrubs with evergreens: mugo pines interplanted with deciduous yellow-flowered potentillas and ‘Crimson Pygmy’ barberry are beautiful together, and all three do well in full sun, tolerate salt and drought, and require only light pruning.
