Use for Many Common Hedge Plants Like Privet or Laurel
Easy as Sticking Sticks in the Ground!
Privet is such a valuable hedge plant, especially for urban areas, that it has become synonymous with ordinariness. In the Harry Potter books, Privet Drive is the address of Harry’s aunt and uncle, who represent normal, hard-working folk that like good food, and sensibly keep their nephew with dangerous powers safely under the stairs.
But Privet has some magical qualities of its own, easily available to all us voluptuous muggles.
Autumn to Late Winter is the season for taking hardwood cuttings, so although February is the last really good month for it, privet is in a group of plants that propagate so easily this way that you can stick them directly into the ground and forget about them almost anytime!
This is a great way to beef up gaps in your hedge, and inside a hedge is usually an ideal place for an establishing cutting because it will have shelter from the sun, which could otherwise dry it out in its first summer.
Other easy things to try include cherry laurel, willow, poplar, forsythia, flowering and fruiting currants, elderflower (most gardeners are more likely to want to propagate its cultivars Black Lace or Aurea), roses, and of course dogwood. Fuchsias may not have quite the same high success rate but are still reliable.
Right now is an ideal time to try, when the soil is nice and damp and not-frozen.
You might need to make a slit with your spade first, but in most garden soils you should be able to push the cutting right in.
It helps the cuttings to root if you say your catchphrase such as “bam, in the ground!” as you do so. Professional plantsman John Lord demonstrates his method:
If you want your cuttings in a sunny place that gets hot and dry in summer, the best thing is to grow them in pots in a cool, shaded place for a growing season, then transplant them out the following Autumn.
Cuttings root best in cool, shady conditions, regardless of what the mature plant prefers.
You could use a shade barrier to protect them, but this is usually more work and potentially looks messy in the garden; natural things like logs, stones, straw are good for creating blocks of shade at ground level.
This RHS Guide had more details on hardwood cuttings: note that while rooting hormone is always helpful, it’s not necessary for the plants listed above.
Hello
I purchased over 100 bare rooted privet hedge plants from you and planted them last Nov. They have been doing really well this summer and almost all of the plants have shot from the base giving them a bushy appearance from the ground up. A few are a little ‘leggy’ in the bottom half of the plant with few leafs and bushy on the top. I haven’t pruned the plants, but over the past 2 months I have nipped out the new growth to encourage bottom growth through the whole of the privet hedge. Can I do anything about this or is it too late as we approach the end of the summer? Should I take the hit and run a hedge trimmer over the lot taking off about a foot and leveling them off ready for next spring?
Thank you for your email.
Hi Iain
Privet hedging is pretty bombproof and as a last resort you can cut a plant down to few inches above ground level and it will resprout bushily from the base….
Hopefully however that should not be necessary. Clipping them back hard now – top and sides will help, and then clipping them lightly again in spring when they are just covered with new young leaves. The two clips should force the recalcitrant bits of privet hedging to sprout low down. A bit of mulch in spring will help as well – privet hedge plants put out masses of green growth if fed.
Hope this helps.
Julian
What is a good fertilizer to use for privet hedge? Have you ever propagated plants by sticking the stem into a potato and then planting it?
Thanks for your questions. Privet is a “gross’ feeder which means it is greedy and exhausts the soil. To combat this the best thing to do is to give your privet hedge a good mulch of 2” of well rotted compost/horse manure every year or two. Much more effective than chemical fertilisers in the long run. For a quick boost a foliar feed in spring or early summer is probably as good as anything else.
As for potato cuttings – there is lots of information on the web – it certainly is used when taking rose cuttings, but we have no direct experience.