Green Beech Hedging Plants

Fagus sylvatica: Bareroot Green Beech Hedge Plants

Green Beech is superb as hedging. In spring, its graceful branches are clothed with bright, green leaves with a wisp of furriness to them that disappears as the foliage matures to a more intense green, finally becoming golden and russet-coloured in the autumn. The summer brings tiny flowers that mature into beech nuts in the autumn. The bark is smooth and grey, the colour of elephant hide - very Farrow and Ball.
You can see our copper beech hedging plants here, find economy packs of fifty plants on our main beech hedging page, or buy beech trees in large standard sizes.

As a well-clipped hedge, you get the changing foliage colours from spring to autumn, and then it will hold onto its desiccated leaves through the winter (known as marcescence), giving you the privacy of an evergreen hedge but with the lightness of colour and tone of a deciduous hedge.
As a tree, it can reach 35 metres.

Delivery season: Purple beech plants are delivered bareroot during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.
Choosing a size: Small plants are cheaper and overall better for hedge use, unless instant impact is your priority. If you are only buying a few plants for ornamental use, then you may as well use bigger ones. All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Features

• Size sold: 40-175 cm
• Hedge height: 1m to very tall
• Soil: all soils, but not badly drained
• Use: Formal/Native
• Single Row: 3/m (no need for a double row unless you want a stock-proof hedge
• Colour: green in spring, golden-brown in autumn
• Great to add structure & value to your property.
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

Growing Common Beech

Beech is fairly unfussy about where it is planted but does not like very heavy, wet soils, winter waterlogging, or deep a shade: if you have those, hornbeam is a close alternative.
Well-drained, rich soil in a sunny position is perfect, not least because it is glorious to see the sun shining through its translucent green leaves in spring.

It is easily clipped to shape and only requires yearly pruning making it low maintenance once established.

It rarely succumbs to disease: when it does, it is usually tar crust, which typically affects old trees, not hedges).

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

Green Beech in your Garden

Along with Yew, Beech is a go-to hedge for increasing the value of your property, and is probably the most popular deciduous hedge in the UK today.

A space enclosed by beech has a weightlessness to it that cannot be achieved by the more sombre dark colours of evergreen hedging. A beech hedge will provide 'bones' for your garden year round so that you can divide your garden into rooms, or just create an elegant boundary with your neighbour.

A clipped beech hedge is a tremendous backdrop to a herbaceous border, providing a contrast to the colour of the flowers and a flat background to set off the architectural shapes of plants like Acanthus or any dark, evergreen topiary.

One planting idea is to grow a pretty Ivy such as Glacier or Gold Heart under the hedge, which smothers the weeds and frames its base nicely. On a slightly grander scale, statues looks wonderful against a beech hedge: stand a stone or lead urn, planter or figure against it and immediately your garden will look more sophisticated and complete.

Once a hedge is well-established you can experiment with cutting niches into it to contain statues or sculptures. To add drama, intersperse some copper beech amongst the green (or go the whole hog and just plant a copper beech hedge).

Did You Know?

The tallest hedge in the world, as recognised by the Guinness Book of Records is in North East Scotland at Meikleour. At 30 m tall and 530 m long it was planted by men before they marched to fight in the Jacobite rebellion. They never returned, and so the trees have been allowed to grow to commemorate them.

It has long been part of our landscape, coming over here about 5,500 years ago, and was perhaps best employed by Capability Brown, who used their vast and elegant form to punctuate parkland and to form great silver columns when grown in more confined woods.

Pig farmers used to fatten their livestock on beechnuts over winter, a practice reflected in Spain where pigs are fed on acorns: the resulting Jamon Iberico is some of the most expensive in the world.

Beechwood is hard and good for firewood but not so resilient that it can be used for outdoor structures. It does make great indoor furniture and worktops.

The nuts, beechmast, are edible in small quantities: think of them like vitamin tablets, and eat one or two a day, rather than as a snack. People used to make a flour out of them and soak it to leach out the tannins and make it possible to eat them in quantity.