Hedge Plants and Sapling Trees
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Hedging plants are cheaper, longer lasting, and much easier to install than a fence.
Hedgerows provide privacy and structure to your garden, protection from the elements, a habitat for wildlife, and an ornamental framing of foliage and flowers for your lawns and flower beds.
What is so good about bareroot hedging?
The majority of UK hedging is planted bareroot.
Buying plants with no soil around the roots may not sound ideal, but bareroot gives you superior, cheaper, and easier to handle plants compared to pot grown.
While out of the ground, bareroot plants are kept in ideal cold, humid conditions until picked, quality-checked, and delivered by next-day courier.
Bareroot hedge plants are, compared to pot grown equivalents:
- Cheaper
- Better due to being field grown
- Faster growing & stronger establishing
- Weigh much less = easier to handle and plant
- More eco-friendly, plastic free cultivation
- Wider selection available
- Only delivered November-March
Some plants or larger sizes only come in pots.
The most popular species are sold bareroot in winter and potted the rest of the year.
Where you have a choice, bareroot is better.
Our healthy, high-quality stock is grown well, lifted regularly so it spends the least time in transit, double-checked for quality, and kept in proper cold-store facilities before packing.
- When your order is ready: your mail order hedge plants are delivered by next working day courier (not the next working day after ordering!)
- Friendly support: if there is anything wrong with your plants when you inspect them, Contact Us within 5 working days
All bareroot plants are covered by our Refund Guarantee, so you can give them a whirl with complete confidence.
To add interest to a new hedge or woodland, you cannot beat a range of garden bulbs.
What are the cheapest hedge plants?
Bareroot is always cheaper than pot grown.
Small sizes are obviously cheapest, and tend to perform even better.
Top 4 cheapest deciduous hedge plants:
Top 4 cheapest evergreen hedge plants:
For larger projects, mixed hedge packs offer the best value per plant.
Choosing Which Size Hedge Plants to Order
The most popular species are delivered in sizes ranging from little 40/60cm tall unbranched 'whips', up to over 1.5m, feathered with side branches.
- If you are in a hurry for privacy and need instant impact, then pick the biggest size that fits your budget
- Otherwise, we recommend planting smaller plants, which require less maintenance to reliably produce a satisfyingly dense mature hedge
- If you are filling gaps in an existing hedge, large replacements are usually better, but small plants can slide into tough soil full of roots, and require less water.
Smaller plants have several advantages
- Cheaper
- Easier to plant
- Establish well because they are dug up with most of their roots intact
- Need less water in their first summer (but watering is still essential in dry weather)
- Can be clipped attentively to ensure a bushy base & dense growth
So Which Size Hedging Should I Order?
- Farmers and other large scale hedge or forestry projects prefer plants 40/60cm tall: it's the minimum required size for Countryside Stewardship hedging, and has the best success rate in field conditions.
- Conifers for forestry typically have to be sold a bit smaller, e.g. 20/40cm tall for a Sitka Spruce.
- Many gardeners choose 60/80cm tall as a great compromise between price, size, and waiting time until you get a mature hedge.
- Plants over 80cm tall are good for creating privacy ASAP, and filling gaps in mature hedges.
- Remember, big plants need more water in their first year to thrive.
- Rootballed Yew is the biggest hedging we deliver, along with Instant Hedge Troughs.
Choose the Best Hedging for Me
Most people plant evergreen hedges or beech / hornbeam around their homes for privacy and year round interest, and rugged, deciduous native plants everywhere else.
Most popular hedge plants lists:
More Useful Hedge Plant Lists:
What plants can't I use in a hedge?
These trees are sold as hedge-sized saplings, tree whips, which are not intended for clipping as a hedge, but are often planted along a hedge to grow into normal trees above it.
- Birch
- Oak
- Rowan
- Whitebeam
- Wild Cherry or Bird Cherry
- Sycamore (not recommended in hedges)
Use tree guards, so their tops aren't accidentally trimmed with the hedge.
On their own, these trees won't produce satisfyingly dense hedges, especially in winter.
But if they are scattered in a mixed native hedge, surrounded by solid plants like Hawthorn and Blackthorn, they look fine.
Sycamore is a bit of a bully, so is not recommended in hedges at all.
Hedging With Berries: provide extra interest & wildlife value, and several soft fruit bushes can be grown as / inside hedges as a treat beside a gate.
When and how do I plant hedging?
Bareroot: November to March. Pot grown: any time except frozen soil.
See our step-by-step guides:
How many hedge plants per metre?
Standard spacing for most hedging:
- Single row boundary hedge: 3 plants per metre (33cm apart)
- Double row stockproof: 6 plants per metre, rows 45cm apart
- Beech & Hornbeam: 4 plants per metre in a double row
- Box (Buxus): 5 plants per metre (20cm apart)
- Interior garden hedge: 2 per metre
Read more about hedge spacing.
Aftercare
New hedges need proper care in their first year to establish successfully:
- Water twice weekly in dry weather - establishing plants are on "life support"
- Keep weeds clear for 75cm either side - weeds kill more hedges than rabbits
- Mulch
- Firm soil back down after frost
- Record losses for replacement next season
For complete first-year care instructions including mulch options, watering schedules, and protection tips, see our hedge aftercare guide.
Hedge Trimming
Trimming is what makes a hedge. It's essential for dense, bushy growth all over.
Country hedging: Cut back by 50-60% immediately after planting to force low branching. Reduce new growth by 50% the following winter, then trim lightly each year until mature.
Formal hedging: Trim lightly. Mature hedges need 1-2 cuts per year (Beech/Privet twice, Box/Yew once). Don't cut the leading stem of Yew until it's a little over the desired height
Hedgerow trees: Plant like hedge plants but prune off lowest branches and any competing trunks to maintain a single trunk. Use tree guards so tops aren't trimmed with the hedge.
Hedge laying: Used to radically regenerate old hedges. It's mainly used on mixed native country hedging, but it's suitable for most garden hedges.
Well-maintained new hedges shouldn't need laying for 50+ years, but you could lay from about year 7-8 onwards if you wanted, when the base of the trunks had thickened enough for really vigorous, multi-stem regrowth.
For detailed trimming instructions by hedge type:
What is the difference between an ornamental shrub, a hedge plant, and a sapling tree?
Mainly their intended use!
Most hedge plants are sapling trees, delivered at ideal starting sizes for hedge use, typically bareroot.
A beech hedge plant is a sapling tree, which left to grow with no trimming becomes a normal beech tree, not a hedge.
Many ornamental shrubs are cultivated varieties of hedge plants, usually delivered in pots, and certainly could be used as hedging, like Cornus 'Midwinter Fire' and plain old native dogwood.
General differences
- Hedge plants: mostly uncultivated tree or shrub species, delivered bareroot if possible, trimmed 1-2x yearly for dense, functional barriers.
- Ornamental shrubs: mostly cultivated shrub varieties, delivered in pots. Pruned lightly, if at all, for best flowers & foliage display
- Sapling trees: Most hedge plants are sapling trees, but many sapling trees like Oak and Sycamore are unsuitable for clipped hedges. They are often planted along or beside hedges as tall screening and windbreaks
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