Hi Shuva,

Apologies for the slow reply.

The new spring leaves are mostly green-ish on copper/purple beech, but there should be visible signs of the copper colour once the leaves are fully unfurled, which will quickly spread over the whole leaf. By now (second week of May) you should be seeing the copper colour all over the oldest leaves, I added a pic to the end of the blog to show you ours.
How are yours looking now?

Hello Alison,

It sounds like a leaf mining insect, do any of these look like yours?

If not, does it look like this? That is a disease that has been recorded in Europe but to my knowledge not in the UK…yet.

Hello Simon,
Yes you can certainly hard prune your beech, it responds well. For best results, do it over a couple of years to encourage regrowth that will bush out as you cut off the old tops. But if you want to cut off 1.5m in one go, do it in winter, it’ll be fine, might look a bit sparse for the first year.

A metre apart is not close, let’s say, so to fill in gaps you can keep reducing the height of your beech over another year or two, even lower than your target height, to encourage lateral regrowth from the base that will mesh with its neighbours as the hedge bushes back up to the desired size.

Your old haunt is a different Ashridge, we are over in Somerset, next to Castle Cary.

The ivy will kill the beech if you do not remove it. You might also want to read our article on pruning an established beech hedge at https://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/gardening-advice/how-to-plant-hedge/beech-hedging-pruning

I am afraid I cannot find your details on our system so I am guessing you did not buy your copper beech hedging from us. Without pictures, it is very hard to offer an opinion, but my first guess would be that it sounds like a lack of water. Beech is shallow-rooted and suffers in dry summers like this until it is more established than yours.

Hope this helps