How Not to Plant a Beech Hedge... But Did It Matter?

My friend Rachel is a passionate if impatient gardener. Vegetables are really her thing, probably because they germinate and grow before she gets bored

Rachel planted a beech hedge five years ago with great enthusiasm, so much so that she put a lot of effort into doing the wrong things, leaving her too knackered to do the right things.

Her mistakes were as follows:

1. She planted her poor unsuspecting beech into a beautiful trench filled with good compost ... but dug into pure, blue and yellow, potters clay.
Every time it rains, the trench fills with water, turning the compost enriched soil into a spongy bath, and it takes an age to drain.
Beech thrives in clay where drainage is decent, but hates wet soil.

2. She carefully relaid the turf she had lifted back along the strip where the beech hedge had been planted. This looked pretty, but ensured that in dry weather the grass would get all the moisture before the beech did.
New hedges should be kept free of weeds and grass around their base, ideally with mulch over the soil.

3. Exhausted from all that hard digging and re-turfing, she went inside to watch Netflix without trimming the tops off her young beech hedge plants. This could be done at planting time or a bit later, but it's necessary to make the plants bush out.
So, here beech that (amazingly) survived, grew tall, and straight, with only a few small side branches, like the tree that it really is and not the hedge that she wanted.

Last year, we took her sad looking 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 correctly at the outset, she would have had a decent hedge at least two and possibly three years ago.

If you are patient, use younger beech plants delivered at either 40/60 or 60/80cm tall, which will always give you a denser hedge.
However, if you are impatient, like Rach, cheat, and plant our larger well branched 80/100cm or 100/125cm beech hedging, then prune the tops off every year to make them bush.

Sit back, relax and watch your garden grow!