Plants Per Metre In A Double Row Hedge

Spacing a Staggered Double Row Hedge at 6 Plants per Metre

For your country hedge to qualify for the BN11: Planting New Hedges Grant, or simply to be stockproof, you must meet several requirements. 
After selecting the right mix of plants (our country hedge packs or conservation hedge packs do this for you), the next most important thing is to plant in a staggered double row with a total of 6 plants per metre, as demonstrated in our How to Plant a Country Hedge film.

A garden hedge, or a non-stockproof hedge that isn't eligible for the BN11 grant, is typically planted at 3 per metre in a single row.

A staggered double row is simply two normal single rows (where plants are spaced at 33cm = 3 per metre) in parallel, spaced about 40cm apart, with one row starting about 16.5cm after the other, so that the plants in one row are at the mid-point of the plants in the other row.

This incredibly advanced diagram, made at great expense using unwilling volunteers, shows you a bird's eye view.

Each black dot represents a hedge plant, the red lines mark a metre, and the brown bits on either end are some boundary like a fence or building. 

The first thing to note is that you typically do not put your first & last hedge plant on the zero & finish line of the actual hedge area / footprint, which is marked by the entire grid. 
You put your first and last plant about 16.5cm away from the edges of the space that the mature hedge will grow to fill.

To save you counting, there are 6 metres of hedge in the diagram.

• Along the top row, there are exactly 3 plants per metre all the way along: 18 plants in total. 
• But along the bottom row, there are only 17 plants in total: that's 3 per metre until the last metre, where there are only two.

That means that along the whole double row, you have six plants per metre in total, except for the last metre where you only have five plants. 

If you aren't applying for the grant, then that is fine.

But in order to claim your New Hedge Grant for that final metre, you need to stick one more plant in the awkward corner, about 16.5cm away from its neighbour in the same row.

You can use any hedge plant for this, but the ideal choice when you are up against a wall is something that is naturally shrubby and/or suckering from the base - any of the native wild roses are ideal, blackthorn is good if the spot is reasonably sunny, or wild privet is perfect for gloomier spots.