Monthly Archives: January 2009

The Best Beech Hedge

by
4

We were at a friend’s house for lunch today and on the way in, walking though his garden, I admired his beech hedge. It is not an old beech hedge, maybe 5 years (although I need to check).  What struck me about it were two things:

1.  It was very full – the lowest branched were ON the ground. No gaps or ugly legs at the bottom.

2.  It was incredibly dense.  The leaves (all dead now of course but that lovely rich golden brown only beech has) were absolutely crammed together. It was amazing how many there were on a hedge that was less than 3 feet tall.

So, over lunch I asked the obvious question – “Who did you get those fabulous beech hedge plants from?”  To which (I kid you not) the reply was “You”. 

We sell a lot of hedging, and I can be forgiven for forgetting that in (probably) 2003 or 2004 my mate Dave, who buys loads of stuff from us, had acquired 250 beech hedge plants. He could not remember how tall they were, but guessed they were less than 2 feet.  What he had done, was broken most of the rules. He had planted them, not trimmed them at all and ”waited” until they were growing avay happily.  Someone then said that he should have cut them back, so, as best he can remember he had cut them back by between 1/2 and 2/3rds in (probably) June or July….

They had bushed out low down and he was so pleased with the outcome, that he has cut them back every year since, removing about half of the new growth  from the year before.  All I can say is that the result is a fantastic hedge.  I am not saying that this brutal regime is for everyone, but it has certainly worked for him.

If you want to try, you can find plants from the same genetic line in our beech hedge plant section.

Next time we go there, I might just remember the camera…

Sit back, watch your garden grow and Enjoy! 

Resting behind your Laurels

by
2

Prunus Laurocerasus Rotundifolia is one hell of a mouthful for one of the most common hedging plants in Britain.  Poor old cherry laurel.  Abroad it is known as the “English Laurel” for good reason – no one plants it as much as we do.

That, of course, is because no one understands it like we do. Prunus laurocerasus is the best roadside hedging plant there is, and with our small island, and seemingly unlimited cars (I read the other day somewhere that car numbers had risen ten times in the last thirty years, but roads had only increased in length by 10%) we need good roadside hedging.

Cherry laurel (so called because of its cherry -like berries) has heavy, leathery leaves that nature designed to completely exclude light, so there would be no weed competiton around a laurel bush.  So a laurel hedge blocks the light of passing cars.  Those same heavy leaves are also hard to move, and as sound travels by vibration, they are excellent dampeners of traffic noise.

Prunus laurocerasus has two other qualities. It is evergreen and so is every bit as effective in midwinter (when traffic noise and light pollution are at their worst) as it is in summer. And it grows quickly to considerable heights – there is a laurel hedge just outside Bristol providing shelter from the M5 that must be at least 20 feet in height.

So the next time you see a cherry laurel hedge by a busy road, be consoled by the thought that the noise you are is somewhat reduced on the other side.

Relax and watch your garden grow.

 

Hawthorn: Hedge Plant Portraits

by
5

If you will pardon the french, Hawthorn is the dog’s b*****ks of a hedge plant. Most of the hedges near us (be they hawthorn, beech, whatever) come from us – not surprisingly as Ashridge Trees sells over 2 million plants a year of which a large proportion end up in hawthorn hedges.

With the possible exception of yew, no other hedge plant has the dignity and good temper of hawthorn.  It is almost unflappable.

Next to our packing shed is what ought to be an abomination of a hedge.  Solid hawthorn, planted on a bank of what can only be described politely as “subsoil”, weed infested, unclipped.  What you might call neglected or, if it was a small child, abused. And yet here we are on 5th January 2009 and this long suffering hawthorn hedge is still covered in haws. They were dripping with frost this morning and looked simply stunning as I walked in to work.  Closer examination showed a few buds are beginning to stir, and I have complete confidence in sayng that that the seriously hard frost we got last night will have left them as perfect as ever.

Less than a mile away is a small ex-council house (I think privately owned now) whose exquisite small garden is open to the public one day a year in June.  In the interests of the Gardeners Benevolent Fund, I am afraid you will need to buy the Yellow Book of Gardens Open to the Public in England & Wales to find out where it is. Anyway, in June, when a Hawthorn hedge is neither in flower or in full berry, this little garden’s boundary hedge is a tight clipped, razor edged, utterly immaculate thing of beauty.  And visitors do a double take when, on reading the notes to find out what it is, they discover they have been had by a simple old hawthorn hedge.

If you have room, and you have not got one…..

You can start here if you want to buy hawthorn hedge plants.

Ice Blue Lavender Plants, Dilly Dilly…

by
2

I have never read in a gardening book anywhere that a lavender hedge is a beautiful thing in winter.  Well, our was yesterday morning.  Like most of you, we had a cracker of a frost the night before last.  Combined with quite dense fog, it left a coating of white on everything – a huge beech at the bottom of the garden was glittering from head to foot.

And the lavender plants in the hedge around the rose border were simply stunning.  I am not sure how the physics work here, but they were not so much frosted as coated with crystals, some as much as 1/2″ long.  The hedge itself is pretty compact, not much more than 35cms tall and about the same across, but with the sun shining it was a lavender hedge, encrusted in diamonds, that simply dominated a garden full of good stuff.

Which in a roundabout way leads me on to the thought for the next week or two. If you are planning on buying lavender plants to make a hedge or an edge spare a thought for ground preparation. Our lavender plants will happily survive the beautiful cold, because they are in a really well drained bed.   Cold and dry is OK, cold and wet is a killer.

So when the frost has gone, and the ground is soft again, go and work off some Christmas excess by really digging over the ground where your lavender will (generally) beautify your garden all through the summer.  Get out any perennial weeds, stones, roots and the like.  Work in masses of well rotted compost and add plenty of horticultural sand or grit if your ground is a bit claggy.  Dig it over now and it will have plenty of time to settle before you get round to planting in April or May.

Don’t plant until late April – lavender plants like the soil to be a bit warmer than it is in March and they will grow away better as a result.  And just as it did for the last day of 2008, it will light up your garden all through summer, although its blue will be somewhat warmer than it was two days ago.

Sit back and watch your plants grow!