Photinia Red Robin Hedge Plants - Pot-Grown Hedging

Photinia Red Robin Hedge Plants - Delivered by Mail Order from the Nursery with a 1 Year Guarantee

Photinia Red Robin is a colourful, vigorous hedging plant or large ornamental shrub. It has bright red young leaves in spring that change to green by midsummer. Suitable for formal garden hedges.
Photinia Red Robin is good for hedges up to about 5 metres high.

Photinia Red Robin hedge plants are only delivered pot-grown, year round.
All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Spacing a Photinia Red Robin hedge:
Plant Photinia Red Robin hedging at 2 plants per metre, 50cms apart.

General description of Photinia Red Robin plants:
Photinia x fraseri Red Robin makes one of the most exciting evergreen hedges and is also a fine specimen plant. It clips easily and can be hard pruned, which is ideal for both formal hedging and low maintenance borders. Red Robin gets its name from the bright red young leaves which appear each spring on the the tips of every twig and stem, creating a superb show of colour that few other evergreens can compete with. The leaves gradually change, in a sort of reverse autumn display, through a muddle of oranges and bronzes to a lush, glossy green during the summer.
As long as Photinia gets plenty of sun, the new foliage will be followed in late spring by branching clusters of little white flowers with pale purple stems. These become little round, red (inedible for humans) fruit in autumn. All in all, Red Robin is dressed to impress for most of the year.

Red Robin does need sun to flower well (and so produce berries) but will still grow well in quite shady spots at the back of a shrub border. It is not hardy enough for exposed Northern sites.
It will grow in just about any well drained soil type. Heavy clay is alright if it is on a slope, ridge or other site that does not trap water; waterlogged roots will kill your plants and excess humidity in the air can cause unsightly leaf spot.

Give your Red Robin plants a little trim in early spring to bring on a strong flush of bright young leaves. As these begin to lose their glow, lightly trim them again to encourage another wave; you can do this about 3 times a year, with the last trim in July. Regular trimming also helps to prevent leaf spot.
Always clean up the fallen leaves from under your plants.

Photinia has an upright growth habit, so it naturally holds its shape when used as a hedge plant. You can also grow it as a tree with a domed canopy, about 5 metres high.

History & uses of Photinia x fraseri Red Robin:
Also known as Red-tip photinia, the original Photinia x fraseri is a cross between Photinia glabra and Photinia serratifolia. Red Robin was bred in New Zealand. It has won the RHS Award of Garden Merit and the Award of Merit for displays of its cut stems.

Growing Photinia Red Robin plants:
Photinia Red Robin will grow well in any soil with decent drainage, including heavy clay, as long as the site doesn't get waterlogged. They are quite shade tolerant, but they always look best in full sun.
Photinia is not suitable for cold, exposed sites or frost pockets. It should be fine for sheltered Scottish gardens on the warmer West coast.

Prepare your site before planting:
It is good to dig over the area where you plant a hedge several months in advance, especially if the soil is poor. Destroy the weeds first: nettles, brambles and ground elder are tough and a glyphosate based weed-killer is the best way to remove them. Then dig the soil over; remove rocks, roots and other rubbish. Mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades. If your soil is rich, you don't have to dig it over, but killing all the weeds is still necessary.

Watch our video on how to plant a garden hedge for full details.
Remember to water establishing plants during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Hedge Planting Accessories:
Prepare your site for planting by killing the weeds and grass with Roundup weed killer.
You can buy a hedge planting pack with sheets of mulch fabric and pegs to hold it down.
If your soil quality is poor, we recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of new trees and shrubs.
You can also improve your soil with bonemeal organic fertiliser and Growmore.

After you have planted your Photinia Red Robin hedge, the most important thing to do is water it in dry weather. You will also need to weed around the plants. Watering should be thorough, so the ground is soaked. Let the soil almost dry out before watering again. Watering & weeding will be necessary for at least a year after planting.
Like all evergreen plants, Photinia Red Robin is active and needs moisture in the ground throughout the year. This means that your establishing plants need to be watered in the winter when they are planted, if the weather is dry.

Trimming Formal hedge plants:
Photinia Red Robin doesn't need any clipping at all in its first year. In the winter of the following year, your young hedge should be trimmed lightly and every winter after that until it is mature.
When it is fully grown, you can clip it at anytime. A good time to clip Photinia Red Robin hedges is in spring or early summer (or both, if you want to keep your hedge really tidy). Regular clipping will encourage new red shoots.
We recommend that you don't trim in late summer, to avoid frost damage to the new growth.

Special notes on caring for Photinia Red Robin hedges:
If you didn't use a mulch fabric, it is beneficial to mulch around the base of the hedge each year with well rotted manure or compost.

Photinia Leaf Spot: Red Robin can be prone to leaf spot in humid weather and there isn't a lot that can be done about this, other than removing and burning affected leaves, cleaning up fallen leaves and looking for ways to improve the air flow in and around the plants - it certainly isn't worth using a fungicide in all but the very worst cases. A much better way to keep leaf spot under control is to keep your plants healthy with a plant feed once a year and a bit of mulch around (but not touching) the bases of your plants.

Hygiene & Diseases:
Dead, damaged or diseased wood can be pruned off as soon as it appears.
Disinfect your pruning tools between every cut if there is any sign of disease.
Burn or dispose of any diseased material, do not compost it.

Read our full terms and conditions here.

Delivery: The basic delivery charge for orders of bareroot plants is £9.49 + vat, which increases to £12.55 + vat if you add any pot-grown plants, standard trees or fruit trees to the order.
Because couriers sometimes experience delays, we schedule delivery by week, not by day. Therefore, please plan your planting day for the weekend at the end of the delivery week or for the week following delivery, at the earliest.
You can choose the delivery week that suits you during checkout and we will email you the day before your plants are due to arrive.

Payment: We do not charge your card until we begin to prepare your order for packing.

Guarantee: If any plants die within a year, we will replace them. We only ask that you follow our planting & growing instructions and sent us clear photographs of the dead plants in situ, so we can help to make sure that the replacement plants succeed. You only pay for the delivery of the replacements.

Please note that our guarantee is void if there is a hosepipe ban in your area: your newly planted hedging must be watered in dry weather while it is establishing. The best way to water is very thoroughly every few days: at least once a week if there is no heavy rain.

Our nursery has been supplying container grown and bareroot hedging plants to gardeners, farmers and town planners since 1949. Our website started in 2003, so we do understand the concerns that you may have about buying hedging plants online. If any of your plants are damaged when they arrive or if you are otherwise not satisfied with your order after you inspect it, please repackage it and contact us. We will give you a refund or send replacements and send a courier to come and collect the unwanted plants.