Portuguese / Portugal Laurel Hedge Plants | Prunus lusitanica

Portuguese Laurel Hedge Plants - Delivered by Mail Order from the Nursery with a 1 Year Guarantee

The Portugal or Portuguese Laurel, Prunus lusitanica, is a vigorous, hardy, evergreen shrub and excellent hedging plant for difficult areas with poor soil, full shade or powerful, cold winds. It grows on chalk, on the coast or in the middle of a city. Its only requirement is a reasonably well drained soil. It can also be grown as a medium sized specimen tree.
Portugal Laurel can be grown as a hedge of any height over about 1.5 metres. If you prune your plants so that they grow into a single stemmed tree, they can reach 15-20 metres in a sunny location.
Browse all of our other varieties of Laurel Hedging plants for sale.

Portugal Laurel hedge plants are delivered bareroot during winter (Nov-March) and pot-grown year round. Bareroot Portuguese Laurel shrubs are cheaper than pot grown plants. Pot grown Portugal Laurel is available in the largest sizes.

Choosing a size:
When you are ordering Portugal Laurel plants for a hedge, we generally recommend that you use the smaller, bareroot plants. They are cheaper than the larger, pot grown plants, easier to handle and they will establish well in poor conditions.
Use larger plants if you want a taller hedge quickly, if you want to clip them as topiary or for instant impact.
All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Spacing a Portuguese Laurel hedge:
Plant bareroot Portugal Laurel hedging at 2-3 plants per metre, 33-50cms apart. Closer spacing will give you a dense hedge more quickly.
Plant pot-grown Portugal Laurel at 2 plants per metre, 50cms apart.

General description of Portugal Laurel plants:
If you need an evergreen hedge for a trouble spot, Prunus lusitanica is the plant for you. It will grow on practically any soil with decent drainage, including shallow chalk. It tolerates full shade and can grow close to the sea. It is more drought resistant than other laurels and despite its temperate name, it also hardier (hardier than Common Laurel, which also won't grow on chalk. Portugal Laurel is slightly less vigorous, however).
Portuguese Laurel's leaves are lush, glossy and clip neatly into a formal hedge. They make a great windbreak, block out light and will go some way towards muffling the sound of traffic. The young spring foliage has a pink tinge, which remains on the leaf stalks after the leaves mature into a rich green colour.
If it is not trimmed hard, Prunus lusitanica will produce small white flowers in June, which rise up in cone shaped spires called racemes and give off a fine scent, similar to hawthorn.
The flowers are followed by berries that turn from red to purple as they ripen. Birds will eat these, but they slightly poisonous to humans; fortunately they too bitter for a child to eat one. As with all laurels, Portuguese Laurel provides excellent winter cover for birds and game.

History & uses of Prunus lusitanica
This plant is native to Spain, Portugal and West Africa; despite this, it is fully hardy everywhere in Britain. It was first introduced to the Oxford Botanic Garden in 1648. It has won the RHS Award of Garden Merit for being an attractive plant that is easy to grow.

Growing Portugal Laurel plants:
Portuguese Laurel will grow well in any soil with decent drainage apart from pure sand. It tolerates full shade although, like any plant, this will slow down its growth. It will grow in frost pockets and very exposed locations on the coast or on a hillside. It is ideal for dry shade underneath larger trees.
The Laurels will not grow well if the site is too damp. Wet sites will kill them and while they tolerate damp, humid locations, they will be affected by mildew.

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. The plants in this video are delivered pot-grown, but planting out bareroot stock is essentially the same.
Remember to water establishing plants during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Growing Portuguese Laurel as a Tree:
The plants that we sell have been trimmed for extra bushiness, which is ideal for a hedge. If you want to grow a Portugal Laurel tree, all you need to do is plant your young bush and let it settle in for year. In winter, select the thickest upright stem to become the trunk of your tree and prune off all the other stems. As the tree grows, you will probably need to continue removing side-shoots from low down on the plant: it's best to do this early in the year when the unwanted shoots are still new and soft.

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.
Portugal laurel doesn't need protection from rabbits or deer.
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 Portuguese Laurel 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, Portugal Laurel 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:
Our Portuguese Laurel 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. Once per year is sufficient and you can trim it up to 3 times a year if it is growing vigorously in a sunny location and you want to keep it really neat.

If you trim your Portuguese Laurel hedge every other year, you will be rewarded with a great display of flowers.
Portugal responds very well to hard pruning and overgrown old plants can be cut back to low stumps if necessary.

Special notes on caring for Portugal Laurel hedges:
Portugal Laurel is a very tough hedge plant that shouldn't need special attention once it has established. 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.

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.

Your 12 Month Guarantee

If any of the plants that you buy from our nursery die within a year of delivery, we will replace them.
You only pay for the delivery of the replacements.

We do ask for clear photos of the plants in the soil, both taking in the planting area and close up. These will help us to work out what went wrong so we can give you the right advice for looking after your replacements.

The most important thing to do with establishing plants is to water them in dry weather. Water very thoroughly, but not too frequently: allow the top 2 inches of soil to dry out before you water again. In hot summer weather, this should mean that you are watering 1 to 3 times per week, depending on your site's drainage and exposure to wind and sun.
If there is heavy rain, that counts as a watering for your plants. If there is only very light rain during hot weather, this probably won't be of much use to your plants and they will still need watering.

Weeding is also very important; we strongly recommend using a mulch mat (for trees) or mulch fabric (for hedges) if weeding your new plants will be impractical.

Outside your 1 Year Guarantee period?

If your plants die or get sick after their first year, you are still welcome to take some photos and send them in: we will still be happy to give you what advice we can.
We can't make any promises, but if you want to buy replacements from us, give us a call and we'll see if we can arrange a discount for you.

Place an order for £250 excluding VAT and delivery and we deliver it for FREE!

Bare-root Plants are only delivered in the winter season, from November to April. Pot grown plants can be delivered all year round

Advantages of Bare-root plants:

You pay less for the same size plants.

You can carry and plan them easily.

You only plant them in winter, so they need less maintenance after planting. The rain will water them for their first few months.

You get the biggest selection: Many trees are not sold pot-grown.

They are "asleep" in winter - this is the best time to transplant any tree.

They use fewer fertilisers & fungicides, less water and fuel in their production & delivery.

Advantages of Pot Grown plants:

Pot grown plants can be delivered & planted all year round.

Plants with tender roots & larger specimens must be delivered in pots.

Plants in pots can be kept for months longer if there is a delay in planting.

Our Advice to You:
If you can't wait to get planting, order Pot grown plants now.
If you are not in a hurry, order bare-root plants for delivery this winter. Simply add them to your basket and choose a winter delivery date that suits you during checkout. This will reserve your plants before they sell out.
We won't charge you until the day before delivery, so cancelling your order is always easy.

If you are only ordering chemicals and other small items, delivery is £3.50

Our delivery charge for all other orders is £6.50 + VAT.

If you live in the Scottish Highlands or the Isle of Wight, there will be an extra charge of £15 + VAT on top of the appropriate basic charge, as listed above.

If your order is over £250 exc. VAT, there will be no delivery charge.

If you are uncertain, just add items to your basket which will calculate the basic shipping charge for you.