DescriptionPlanting InstructionsAfter CareDelivery & Guarantee
Quickthorn Hedge Plants - Delivered in Bundles of 50 Plants with a 1 Year Guarantee
These Quickthorn hedge packs are bundles of 50 plants. You can order the same hawthorn plants individually here, but you will save money on the same size plants by buying the hedge pack.
- The 60/80cms tall, unbranched plants are called whips. These are the most common size for planting a new hedge.
- The larger Hawthorn bushes, 90/120cms tall, are good for growing a tall hedge in a hurry or for fixing gaps in old hedges.
Common Hawthorn or Quickthorn, Crataegus monogyna, is the most widely used native hedge plant. It will grow practically anywhere and it knits into a dense, wiry hedge that is thorny enough to be an effective barrier without being a nightmare to trim.
You can browse all of our Hawthorn hedging & trees here.
Hawthorn is the main component of a mixed conservation hedging pack.
Quickthorn hedge packs are only delivered bareroot, during winter (November - March).
All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).
Spacing a Quickthorn hedge:
Plant Quickthorn hedging at 3 plants per metre, 33cms apart.
You can also plant Quickthorn at 5 plants per metre in a staggered double row,
with 33 cms between each plant along the row and 40cms between the rows.
Each pack of 50 plants will make 16.5 metres of single row hedge and 10 metres of double row hedge.
Growing Quickthorn hedges:
A Hawthorn hedge is very tough and will grow anywhere in the UK, in any soil, apart from extremely wet, boggy areas or soil that is too sandy.
Prepare your site before planting:
Native hedge plants like Quickthorn are very tough. The only essential preparation is to kill the weeds in a strip a metre wide along the planting site: improving the soil should not be necessary. If your soil is exceptionally poor and dry, then digging in some well rotted manure and/or compost is worthwhile.
Watch our video on how to plant a country hedge for full details. With regards to the instruction to hard prune each plant, cut the 60/80cms size whips down by half and cut the 90/120cms size bushes down to three-quarters of their height.
Make sloping cuts slightly above an outward facing bud. They will now branch out from there, thickening the base of the hedge.
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 you are planting in an area with rabbit and/or deer, you will need to use a plastic spiral guard for each plant, supported by a bamboo cane.
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 plant a hedge, the most important thing to do is water it in dry weather. If you didn't use mulch of some kind, you will also need to weed around the hedge. Both of these will be necessary for at least a year after planting.
Trimming Country hedge plants: Quickthorn is a vigorous, native hedging plant that benefits from being cut back hard right after planting, as shown in the country hedge planting video. In the following years, your young hedge should be trimmed lightly once in winter, until it is mature. When it is fully grown, you can clip it at anytime.
Special notes on caring for Quickthorn hedges:
Quickthorn 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.
