How to plant a garden hedge

This guide shows how to successfully plant a hedge in your garden. www.gardenninja.co.uk the garden design blogger shows you how! Hedges are great for sheltering your garden from the elements and encouraging wildlife. A hedge can also be low maintenance if you choose a slow growing evergreen variety.

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All explained by Garden Ninja, Manchesters Garden Designer and blogger Lee Burkhill.

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The key pieces of hedge laying equipment are.

Sharp garden spade – to remove turf and dig in your plants
Garden Fork – for cultivating the soil and adding aeration to the planting pockets
Wheelbarrow – to transport plants and remove soil/turf
Tape Measure / Trundle Wheel – to work out distances for planting
Canes – to mark out your plants and boundaries
Watering can – to give your new hedge a good drink!
A cup of tea – to keep yourself hydrated

Beth Chatto, the garden legend, has advocated in choosing the right plant for the right place and this couldn’t be truer for hedges. In your haste to fit your new hedge, you do need to spend some time considering what species best meets your needs.

Are you looking for evergreen colour? Deciduous hedging that may fruit and then drop its leaves each year. Something that’s fast growing, slow growing bushy or upright, thorny or smooth? Deterrent or aesthetic?

Preparing your soil for planting hedges is vital. Fail to prepare and prepare to fail. The more work you put in at this stage the higher the chance of planting success. Firstly you will need to remove any turf that maybe in the area, planting through turf leads to grass and weeds growing in between your hedges and can make for a really messy looking hedge so avoid it at all costs!

Digging over the soil for your hedges helps break up compaction, aids drainage and adds air to the soil. This enables your newly planted hedges to easily root and establish in the soil. You can do this either with a spade and fork turning the over the soil until it’s broken into a suitable tilth (crumbly texture) or with a petrol powered cultivator.

Ensure you cultivate a 60cm wide trench for your plants, this will create a neat boundary for the hedge and allow you to edge the lawn that may adjoin it. Remove any rocks or debris and now you’re ready for the exciting part, planting the hedges!

Please don’t be tempted to add buckets of lovely compost! The reason why is that compost degrades quickly and when planting a hedge it can lead to the hedge dropping and becoming uneven. If you want to use compost for hedges then please use it as a mulch afterwards!

You will need to dig in your hedging plants to the required depth for the plant species you have picked. For the Griselinia littoralis, I’ve used its 1 1/2 depths the pot in which they arrived in. I also dug the holes twice as big as the pot. This allows you to break up the soil and aid root growth and irrigation.

Once planted you will need to water your hedges thoroughly. Given their lack of root structure in the new soil you need to make sure they have plenty of water to help sustain them and enable them to send out new growth and roots. Laying a seep hose or irrigation can help save time in watering your hedges and can be attached to a timer if need be. New hedges will need to be watered at least twice a week even daily if the temperature is high.

Hedges are used frequently in garden design to mark out spaces, screen off views, hide parts of the garden and provide structure. Depending on the style of your garden hedging can be used in a formal or informal way.

Formal hedging uses clipped straight lines to give a clean sharp and symmetrical viewpoint. Clipped box, yew or hornbeam are all classic examples of formal hedging. These are usually considered higher maintenance and can have a dramatic effect on the garden. Knot gardens often used clipped box as a low hedge to mark out the areas or parterre of the garden design. The key with these styles of hedges is order and symmetry.

Informal garden hedging is far more relaxed and natural. Species such as Prunus spinosa, Cherry Laurel, Fuchsia and Hawthorn are often used as informal hedge species. They are usually less manicured, though not always, and have a softer look on a garden design. These are usually better for wildlife as they are not as tightly clipped and so can become home to nesting birds and insects. Always take care when clipping that there’s no nests or young birds in the hedge at that time!

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