Tag Archives: beech

How not to plant a Beech Hedge…

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My friend Bean is a passionate if impatient gardener.  Vegetables are really her thing (probably because so many of them are sown and germinate before you get bored).

The same, unfortunately cannot be said of her prowess when it comes to a beech hedge she planted five years ago.  Her mistakes were as follows:

1.  She planted our poor unsuspecting beech hedging plants in a beautiful trench filled with good compost but dug in pure, blue and yellow, potters clay. Every time it rains the trench fills with water and takes an age to drain.

2.  She carefully relaid the turf she had lifted off the strip of lawn where the beech hedge went around the beech plants, thereby ensuring that in dry weather the grass would get any available moisture before the beech did.

3.  Being in a hurry, she refused to trim the tops off her young beech hedge plants, which meant that the ones that (amazingly) survived, grew tall , and straight. And had no or few side branches.

Last year, we took Bean’s beech hedge in hand, cut all the plants back harder than one normally would, and removed the grass.  It was clipped twice during the summer and one year later, the hedge is not perfect, but it is much better.  There are quite a few branches, leaves are still being held at the beginning of March and it, sort of, looks like a hedge.

If she had planted it right at the outset, she would have had a decent hedge at least two and possibly three years ago.  If you are patient, plant younger beech plants and if you are impatient, like Bean, cheat and plant well branched 80/100cm or 100/125 cm beech hedge plants like these.

Relax and watch your garden grow!

101 uses for your Beech Hedge – No. 73 – Forecasting Spring

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An entirely random thought.

I stumbled on a site that has kept a record of the date on which a hazel bush has come into pollen each year. The theory is that the date a hazel produces pollen indicates whether spring will be early or late (for the sake of completeness, catkins came 9 days later this year than last).

I wonder if the defoliation of my beech hedge tells the same thing. Here, at the end(ish) of February our beech hedge is fully clothed with last year’s leaves. I am pretty sure that last year, when spring came very early, it was only partially clad by now.

Records will be kept and the story will unfold. In the meantime, on the off chance that we have freakish beech hedge plants this year you can buy our own unguranteed weather forecasting kit on our beech hedge pages until the end of the bare root season.  Which is coming… when?

 Relax, enjoy, and watch your garden grow

The Best Beech Hedge

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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!