Bareroot Hornbeam Hedging Plants

Hornbeam Hedging

Hornbeam is perhaps THE plant for deciduous hedging in this country. It is so much like beech, and hornbeam is preferable in shadier and damper situations. Browse our other hedging plants. You can order the sizes above 80cms in economy bundles of 50 plants here.

Its leaves are the most brilliant of greens in spring; Monty Don says that the colour makes his "eyes dance". The veins on each leaf are separated by a corrugated trough so that the leaf with its serrated edge looks a bit crinkled which gives the hedge an interesting texture. The trunks and bark of hornbeam are always well shaped and slightly ridged.  In the autumn (unless it has been exceptionally dry) the leaves turn a clear yellow before becoming pale brown for the winter. If you trim the hedge in mid-summer the winter leaves will hold until next spring.

Growing & Training Hornbeam Hedges 

Hornbeam will thrive in most soils unless it is completely waterlogged all year, but prefers a well-drained rich soil. It will grow more slowly and a bit less luxuriantly, but happy nonetheless, in shade. In open, sunny conditions, it is fast-growing.

Hornbeam is as an excellent hedging plant. Saplings shoot up if well-watered, so within a year or two you will have a tight-knit, low hedge, and over a few more years the potential to possess a tall hedge. A solid, trimmed hornbeam hedge can stand alone in a formal garden with little to distract from it or can be used behind a mixed border to focus attention on the flowers by providing a consistent, green background.

Hornbeam responds well to training. Use it to create tunnels, alleys or more commonly to act as a pleached hedge where the hedge part is raised above the bare trunks. Pleached hornbeam hedges are an elegant boundary wall that divides a garden into different 'rooms', without the enclosed feeling of evergreen hedges. Change the planting underneath the bare trunks: forget-me-nots and tulips in spring, small peonies for summer and lavender for late summer and autumn. Ham House has a good example of a tunnel of pleached hornbeam emerging from a low-growing yew hedge.

Hornbeam is not a specimen tree to grow as an ornamental in a small garden because it reaches 20 metres without difficulty! It does make for a great park or woodland tree, look at Hatfield and Epping Forests, and there are more specialised forms of it: Fastigiata with its wonderful, slim column of leaves is especially sought after and there is an American form, Carpinus caroliniana, whose leaves in Autumn go a zingy orange.

Features

• Size sold: 40-175 cm
• Height: 1m to very tall
• Soil: all soils
• Use: Formal/Native
• Single Row: 3/m
• Double row: 5/m
• Colour: green/brown
• Feature: tolerant of damp, heavy soil
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

Horrible Hornbeam History

It's not horrible at all, the hornbeam has been a highly valued tree for many years because of its strength. Hornbeam timber is the hardest grown in this country. There is a venerable tradition of hornbeam being used to create butcher's blocks, piano hammers and pulley blocks. It was often grown as wood 'pasture', leaving room for cattle to graze around the pollarded trees, which were pruned every few years for firewood and small objects like handles. The density is excellent for firewood and for making charcoal.

To see hornbeam at its most splendid, take a trip to Het Loo in Holland to see the Queen's garden, a labyrinth of covered walkways, caves and tunnels all fashioned from hornbeam grown over an oak trellis.
The best example of a pleached hornbeam hedge can be seen at Hidcote Gardens.