How to Prune a Privet Hedge – Do’s & Don’ts
This Privet hedge had a corner section of it cut off, then a few days later it was trimmed all over and the top was also pruned down a bit.
I took photos after the first pruning and then 8 weeks later:
- This shows the inside of the hedge nicely.
- The area that was hard pruned 8 weeks before is circled in red, the rest was only trimmed (the top was cut off).
- The leaf buds are the small, shiny purple growths.
- The new leaves on the left are thicker than the old ones on the right.
- This is the wrong angle to cut a hedge – the base should stick out further than the top.
- This bare patch at the base was caused by allowing the hedge to become top-heavy.
A vigorous plant like Privet responds well to being hard pruned. Most hedge plants do too, but remember that conifers, which are popular for formal hedging, will not grow back from this sort of pruning.
The Good: By cutting off the top of the hedge, sunlight can reach the new growth.
The Bad: The angle of the side of the hedge is not ideal: the top is wider than the base.
In the photo below, you can see how the top of the hedge leans out and casts shade over the base of the hedge.
Privet is an easy plant that grows well in shady places, so the bald patch at the base of the hedge here will recover quite fast.
Again, most coniferous hedges will not recover from the base at all, so they must be trimmed to the right shape every year.
The right shape for a hedge is a bit like this: / \
Not at all like this: \ /











