Common Laurel Hedge Plants

Prunus laurocerasus Rotundifolia: Bareroot Cherry Laurel Hedging

The common or cherry laurel is a vigorous garden superhero that relishes inhospitable conditions and will make a stunning, shiny green hedge all year round. Its seriously glossy, greeny-yellow leaves, which can be up to 15 cm long, are so verdant and lush that they look almost tropical. Naturally bushy, it blocks out almost everything - car lights, road noise and will dissipate strong, prevailing winds. In summer, it is festooned with tall, white, flowers that are richly scented and pull in bees and butterflies. Autumn brings large, shiny, black, inedible "cherries" that are hugely popular with birds.

View the rest of our selection of laurel hedging or see our range of hedging plants.

Delivery season: Bareroot plants are delivered during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.

Features

• Size sold: 30-60 cm
• Hedge Height: 1m to very tall
• Soil: all soils
• Use: Evergreen
• Single Row: 2-3/m
• Colour: Bright Green
• Great for poor soils and brightening a shady corner
• RHS Award of Garden Merit 

Growing Common Laurel

It will grow in any soil apart from waterlogged. It is very shade tolerant, and is a go-to choice for shady sites with poor, dry soil.

It is low maintenance and can be hard pruned at anytime if necessary, although it will bounce back better if you do this in winter.

Spacing a Cherry Laurel hedge: Like most formal hedging, plant at 3 per metre, 33cm apart in a single row.

Common Laurel in your Garden

Its vigour is second to none, its rounded, shiny leaves play with light to brighten a dark corner of the garden, and it can be shaped into individual balls or lollipops that look fantastic.

Plant a laurel hedge next to a low, stone wall, and you can 'extend' your wall by several metres by trimming the laurel flush to the wall's face. It will provide a perfect screen to block the line of sight from nearby buildings, and is an ideal windbreak to provide shelter in a garden so that you can grow more tender ornamental trees and plants.

Lead and stone statuary or planters look especially good against its vibrant green and are indicative of how laurel can be used in a more formal setting where you use laurel to provide structure in the garden as opposed to the more commonly used but slower growing box or yew.

Another use is as ground cover for game and wildlife, although it is probably best not to grow it next to a field containing livestock because it's poisonous to them.

A similar but less vigorous option is Portuguese laurel, Prunus lusitanica. For more restrained evergreen hedging with smaller, matt leaves but with the same propensity to thrive where no other plant dare go, you could have a look at our Privet hedging.

Did You Know?

The bay (Laurus nobilis), widely used as a culinary herb, is the only 'true' laurel grown widely in this country, although in other parts of the world there are more than 2,500 other species of tree and shrub laurel. Most of these are flowering plants with shiny evergreen leaves and include such familiar names as the avocado, cinnamon and camphor. What we refer to as laurel is in fact a plant that belongs to the cherry family, in the genus Prunus. It has a long tradition of use in gardens here since it was first introduced from the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s.

The foliage is a standard element for floristry.