Prunus Lusitanica Hedging

The Portugal or Portuguese Laurel, Prunus lusitanica, is a vigorous, hardy, evergreen shrub and excellent hedging plant for difficult areas with poor soil, full shade or powerful, cold winds. It grows on chalk, on the coast or in the middle of a city. Its only requirement is a reasonably well drained soil. It can also be grown as a medium sized specimen tree.
Portugal Laurel can be grown as a hedge of any height over about 1.5 metres. If you prune your plants so that they grow into a single stemmed tree, they can reach 15-20 metres in a sunny location.
Browse all of our other varieties of Laurel Hedging plants for sale, see our selection of evergeen hedging or see our full range of hedging plants.

Portugal Laurel hedge plants are delivered bareroot during winter (Nov-March) and pot-grown year round. Bareroot Portuguese Laurel shrubs are cheaper than pot grown plants. Pot grown Portugal Laurel is available in the largest sizes.

Choosing a size:
When you are ordering Portugal Laurel plants for a hedge, we generally recommend that you use the smaller, bareroot plants. They are cheaper than the larger, pot grown plants, easier to handle and they will establish well in poor conditions.
Use larger plants if you want a taller hedge quickly if you want to clip them as topiary or for instant impact.
All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Spacing a Portuguese Laurel hedge:
Plant bareroot Portugal Laurel hedging at 2-3 plants per metre, 33-50cms apart. Closer spacing will give you a dense hedge more quickly.
Plant pot-grown Portugal Laurel at 2 plants per metre, 50cms apart.

General description of Portugal Laurel plants:
If you need an evergreen hedge for a trouble spot, Prunus lusitanica is the plant for you. It will grow on practically any soil with decent drainage, including shallow chalk. It tolerates full shade and can grow close to the sea. It is more drought resistant than other laurels and despite its temperate name, it also hardier (hardier than Common Laurel, which also won't grow on chalk. Portugal Laurel is slightly less vigorous, however).
Portuguese Laurel's leaves are lush, glossy and clip neatly into a formal hedge. They make a great windbreak, block out light and will go some way towards muffling the sound of traffic. The young spring foliage has a pink tinge, which remains on the leaf stalks after the leaves mature into a rich green colour.
If it is not trimmed hard, Prunus lusitanica will produce small white flowers in June, which rise up in cone-shaped spires called racemes and give off a fine scent, similar to Hawthorn.
The flowers are followed by berries that turn from red to purple as they ripen. Birds will eat these, but they slightly poisonous to humans; fortunately they too bitter for a child to eat one. As with all laurels, Portuguese Laurel provides excellent winter cover for birds and game.

History & uses of Prunus lusitanica
This plant is native to Spain, Portugal and West Africa; despite this, it is fully hardy everywhere in Britain. It was first introduced to the Oxford Botanic Garden in 1648. It has won the RHS Award of Garden Merit for being an attractive plant that is easy to grow.

Growing Portugal Laurel plants:
Portuguese Laurel will grow well in any soil with decent drainage apart from pure sand. It tolerates full shade although, like any plant, this will slow down its growth. It will grow in frost pockets and very exposed locations on the coast or on a hillside. It is ideal for dry shade underneath larger trees.
The Laurels will not grow well if the site is too damp. Wet sites will kill them and while they tolerate damp, humid locations, they will be affected by mildew.

Prepare your site before planting:
It is good to dig over the area where you plant a hedge several months in advance, especially if the soil is poor. Destroy the weeds first: nettles, brambles and ground elder are tough and a glyphosate based weed-killer is the best way to remove them. Then dig the soil over; remove rocks, roots and other rubbish. Mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades. If your soil is rich, you don't have to dig it over, but killing all the weeds is still necessary.

Watch our video on how to plant a garden hedge for full details. The plants in this video are delivered pot-grown, but planting out bareroot stock is essentially the same.
Remember to water establishing plants during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Growing Portuguese Laurel as a Tree:
The plants that we sell have been trimmed for extra bushiness, which is ideal for a hedge. If you want to grow a Portugal Laurel tree, all you need to do is plant your young bush and let it settle in for a year. In winter, select the thickest upright stem to become the trunk of your tree and prune off all the other stems. As the tree grows, you will probably need to continue removing side-shoots from low down on the plant: it's best to do this early in the year when the unwanted shoots are still new and soft.

Hedge Planting Accessories:
Prepare your site for planting by killing the weeds and grass with Roundup weed killer.
You can buy a hedge planting pack with sheets of mulch fabric and pegs to hold it down.
Portugal laurel doesn't need protection from rabbits or deer.
If your soil quality is poor, we recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of new trees and shrubs.
You can also improve your soil with bonemeal organic fertiliser and Growmore.

Read our full terms and conditions here.

Delivery: The basic delivery charge for orders of bareroot plants is £6.50 + vat, which increases to £12.55 + vat if you add any pot-grown plants, standard trees or fruit trees to the order.
Because couriers sometimes experience delays, we schedule delivery by week, not by day. Therefore, please plan your planting day for the weekend at the end of the delivery week or for the week following delivery, at the earliest.
We will email you the day before your plants are due to arrive.

*Surcharges to the Highlands and Islands still apply.

Payment: We do not charge your card until we begin to prepare your order for packing.

Guarantee: If any plants die within a year, we will replace them. We only ask that you follow our planting & growing instructions and sent us clear photographs of the dead plants in situ, so we can help to make sure that the replacement plants succeed. You only pay for the delivery of the replacements.

Please note that our guarantee is void if there is a hosepipe ban in your area: your newly planted hedging must be watered in dry weather while it is establishing. The best way to water is very thoroughly every few days: at least once a week if there is no heavy rain.

Our nursery has been supplying container grown and bareroot hedging plants to gardeners, farmers and town planners since 1949. Our website started in 2003, so we do understand the concerns that you may have about buying hedging plants online. If any of your plants are damaged when they arrive or if you are otherwise not satisfied with your order after you inspect it, please repackage it and contact us. We will give you a refund or send replacements and send a courier to come and collect the unwanted plants.

Misc	Shrub, Wildlife Value
Shade	Full Shade, Partial Shade
Area	Coastal Areas, Exposed Windy Areas
Soil	Alkaline/Chalky
Colour	White/Cream
Type	Evergreen, Hedging, Screening

	NUMBER OF PLANTS
SIZES	1-9	10-49	50-249	250-999	1000+
30/50 cm Bareroot	Plenty of Stock£6.52	Plenty of Stock£5.38	Plenty of Stock£5.19	Plenty of Stock£4.87	Plenty of Stock£4.50
80/100 cm POTTED	Out of Stock £14.05	Out of Stock £13.12	Out of Stock £11.98	Out of Stock £11.20	Out of Stock £10.82
100/125 cm 10 LITRE POT	Out of Stock £29.32	Out of Stock £27.18	Out of Stock £25.02	Out of Stock £23.96	Out of Stock £22.82

Portugal Laurel

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Prunus Lusitanica Hedging