English Yew Hedging Plants - Taxus baccata - Bareroot

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

Common Yew, Taxus baccata, is a large native tree that makes a classic evergreen hedging plant. Yew hedging has a rich, deep green colour and clips beautifully into formal lines, billowing curves and sturdy topiary. It is an ideal backdrop to any colourful flowerbed and it is tough enough to be a roadside hedge.
Yew is extremely tough, shade tolerant and will grow anywhere with decent drainage.
Yew will reach about 20 metres if it grows freely as a tree.
The plants on this page are young saplings, ideal for planting as hedging or in woodland projects. You can also buy larger Yew trees with rootballs, which are suitable for both hedges and specimen planting.

Yew hedge plants are delivered bareroot during winter (Nov-March) and pot-grown year round. Bareroot Yew shrubs are cheaper than pot grown plants.

Choosing a size: When you are ordering Yew plants for a hedge, we generally recommend that you use plants that are graded at 40/60cms or 60/80cms. They are cheaper than larger plants, easier to handle and they will establish well in poor conditions. Use larger plants for instant impact, to get a tall hedge quickly or if you intent to clip them as topiary.
All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Spacing a Yew hedge:
Plant Yew hedging at 3 plants per metre, 33cms apart.

General description of Yew plants:
Yew is dense evergreen with a conifer's lush, needle-type leaves, which make for smooth, even looking surfaces when they are clipped. Unlike other conifers, Yew will regrow from old wood and can be hard pruned, so a yew hedge can be clipped roughly and old, neglected yew hedges can be renovated.
Yew has a reputation for being slow growing: this true of mature hedges, which only need clipping once a year. Young yew plants are quite vigorous; they can grow by a metre in under 3 years. The important thing is to leave the central, leading stem of each plant intact: do not trim the main stem until the hedge has reached the desired height. Only trim the side branches of a new hedge very lightly, to encourage bushy growth.

Grown as a tree, Yew likes to become wide and stout. Some specimens will grow to about 20 metres, but it is normal for trees in exposed places to be less than that. Yew casts dense shade and effectively prevents the growth of other plants underneath it. It is an extremely tough tree; the only thing it won't tolerate is constantly wet soil.
Yew is an unusual conifer because it produces a fruit with a red, berry-like coating around each single seed, instead of a pine-cone that carries a large number of seeds. The red, juicy part of the fruit is called the aril: it is a uniquely adapted reproductive part of a pine cone found in all other conifers, called an ovuliferous scale. The seeds are eaten and dispersed by birds. It is special in another way too: yew trees begin life as males or females, but old trees will produce the occasional stem of the opposite sex. This allows isolated trees to continue making fertile seeds.
All parts of the Yew tree are poisonous to humans apart from the red coating of the seeds, but even these should not be eaten: if the seed itself is chewed, it releases paralyzing, potentially lethal chemicals.

History & uses of Taxus baccata
Yew is probably the only truly native British tree: no other tree is sure to have been growing here through the last Ice Age. Yew trees live for ages; there are several yews in Britain that are older than 2000 years, which means that they were centuries old when the Romans invaded in the year 43. The yew trees commonly found in churchyards are often much older than the church itself. Yew's long life is partly due to the strength of the wood and the high toxicity of its living tissues, which seem to be almost immune to disease. One of the noxious poisons derived from the green parts of Yew trees, Taxol, is used in modern medicine to kill cancer cells. Yew's ability to regrow from old wood and its shade tolerant leaves mean that old trees can regenerate if they are damaged by storms or harvested for wood, even if they are over shadowed by faster growing broadleaf trees.

Yew has been an extremely important resource to humans since before modern Homo sapiens emerged on the scene about 200,000 years ago. The oldest surviving wooden relic from our proto-human ancestors is over 400,000 years old: a spear head made of Yew. The Yew Longbow was the cornerstone of the medieval English army. Boys, often Welsh conscripts, would be trained from a young age to use the heavy bow, permanently warping the shape of their bodies in the process.

Growing Yew:
Yew will grow well in any soil and any conditions with good drainage. It is suitable for shade, the coast, chalky soil and very exposed or frosty sites. Mature yew is drought hardy.
Yew will not grow well if the site is regularly wet and boggy. Occasional waterlogging seems to be fine; there is a big old Yew tree near us, growing on pretty rocky ground, that gets drowned almost every winter when the little river next to it floods. It seems to have been fine with that for at about 150 years.

Prepare your site before planting:
Native hedge plants like Yew 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 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.

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.
Yew does not need protection from grazing animals: they won't eat it.
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.
Like all evergreen plants, Yew is active and using water throughout the year. This means that if the weather is dry in winter, your establishing plants need to be watered.

Trimming Formal hedge plants:
Yew doesn't need any clipping at all in its first year. From the winter after planting onwards, your young hedge should be trimmed lightly once a year, until it is mature. When it is fully grown, you can clip it at anytime. A good time to clip mature Yew hedges is during the summer.

Special notes on caring for Yew hedges:
When your new yew hedge is still growing up to the desired height, do not trim the central, leading stem at all. This will make your hedge grow faster. You only need to trim the side branches very lightly to encourage bushy, thick growth.
Yew 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 plants die within a year, we replace them if you have followed our instructions. You only pay for the delivery of the replacements.

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 March. 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 most bareroot plants is £9.49 + VAT.

If your order contains any standard sized trees, fruit trees or pot-grown plants, then the delivery charge is £12.55 + VAT in TOTAL.

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.