Ready to Pleach Lime Trees

• Variety: Ready to Pleach Lime, a Caucasian Lime grown with a flat head
• Latin name: Tilia x euchlora
• Sold as: Bareroot flat-headed standards, 6/8cm girth
• Size: A pleached screen is as tall and wide as the frame you train it on, held there by one cut a year
• Spacing: 2m apart. 1.5m for a denser screen, 2.5m for more light
• Leaves: Glossy deep green, yellow in autumn
• Flowers: Fragrant, yellowish-white, in midsummer
• Honeydew: Usually free of aphids, so no sticky honeydew
• Position: Full sun or partial shade
• Soil: Any fairly well-drained soil, mildly acidic to alkaline
• Hardiness: H6, hardy through the British winter
• Delivered: Bareroot, November to April. Collection from Castle Cary also available

These are Caucasian Limes whose heads we have grown flat, ready for you to tie onto wires and turn into a hedge on stilts. It is the clean Lime: aphids usually leave it alone, so there is no sticky honeydew under it. The size of the screen is the size of your frame.

Ready to Pleach Lime Trees

'Ready to Pleach Lime' tilia x euchlora is the best pleaching lime tree. When they're young, the heads of these trees are naturally "two-dimensional", and we have encouraged them to grow flat. Otherwise, they're the same as our normal Tilia x euchlora standards.

Technically speaking, these trees aren't yet pleached, but very little work is required for you to train the side growths onto pleaching wires set at the heights you want.

Browse our other Lime tree (Tilia) varieties, or our full range of trees.

Delivery season: Lime trees are delivered bareroot from late autumn to early spring, November to April.
Choosing a size: Small trees are cheaper, easier to handle and more forgiving of less than ideal aftercare, so they're best for a big planting project. If instant impact is your priority, or if you are only buying a few plants for use in a place where it's convenient to water them well in their first year, then you may as well use bigger ones. Our standard trees are measured by the girth of the trunk in centimetres, one metre above the ground, not by their height.

Growing Pleached Lime Trees

Extremely tough and undemanding, they thrive best on alkaline soils, but mildly acidic is fine. They're happy in heavy, compacted clay with paving around them: a town planner's best friend.
They tolerate partial shade well, and are recommended for exposed locations; they won't grow right on the beach, but tolerate salt winds. When established, they're drought tolerant.

If you would like to pleach them higher off the ground, simply clear off the side branches to the required height immediately after planting, and rub off all the buds that appear below the desired height (as the tree matures and its bark thickens, there will be less and less of these).
If you want them lower, it'll only take a couple of years for new shoots to develop into nice lateral branches. Simply rub off all the buds that you don't need, and keep the ones that are in the right place.

Planting Distances for Pleached Limes:
The closer they are, the denser more effective the screen is as a visual barrier. We recommend a spacing of 2 metres between trees as a default, 1.5 metres apart for an extra private barrier, and 2.5 metres apart to allow more light through.

When calculating how many trees are required, remember that you need to exclude half the planting distance at each end of the row before the first and after the last tree.
For example, if you are planting at a 2-metre spacing and have 10 metres to cover, you need five, not six trees, because the first and last tree are planted at the 1st and 9th metre marks, not the 0th and 10th metre (as would typically be the case with a hedge).

History & Trivia

Pleaching, or plashing (the latter term is more commonly used in the context of laying a hedge), is as old as hedgerow management, and as an ornamental feature it became really fashionable as a display of wealth in the gardens of stately homes in the 1800's, although it has been recorded since Medieval times. Limes, with their vigorous growth and beautifully flexible stems, are by far the most common tree for pleaching, with Hornbeam being a distant second, which is why we don't grow ready-to-pleach versions of it.

One of the UK's finest allC)es of pleached limes is at Arley Hall, Cheshire, which was planted by Rowland Egerton-Warburton's (1804-1891) gardeners in the mid-1800's.

Standard trees are measured by their girth in centimetres 1 metre above ground level: their trunk's waist measurement. Unlike sapling trees and hedge plants, standards aren't measured by their height, which will vary quite a bit both between and within species.
So, a 6/8cm standard tree has a trunk with a circumference of 6-8cm and an 8/10 standard has a trunk 8-10cm around. This measurement makes no difference to the tree's final height.
On average, standard trees are 2-3.5 metres tall when they arrive, but we cannot tell you precisely how tall your trees will be before we deliver them.

Planting Companions

Our step-by-step guide shows how to pleach a flat-headed Lime. The Red-Twigged Lime is another good Lime for a pleached walk, if you prefer to start from an ordinary standard and like red winter shoots. For a screen without the training, see our trees for privacy and screening. Dust bareroot roots with Rootgrow as you plant.

Why Ashridge for Garden Trees?

Ashridge has sold trees since 1949 and is a Which? Best Plant Supplier 2025. Your Ready to Pleach Lime comes as a bareroot tree, lifted to order while dormant and guaranteed for 12 months. Plant it between November and April, and it will establish readily.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these trees already pleached?

Not yet. The heads have been grown flat, so the side branches are ready to tie along wires. The training is yours to do, and it is light work.

How tall will a pleached Lime screen grow?

As tall as the frame you give it. A pleached tree is held at the height of its wires by a cut once a year, and it stays that size for as long as the cutting continues.

How far apart do you plant them?

Two metres is the usual spacing. Plant at 1.5 metres for a denser screen, or 2.5 metres to let more light through.

Do Lime trees drip sticky sap on cars and paving?

That is honeydew from aphids, and this is the Lime that avoids it. Aphids usually leave it alone, so there is nothing to drip.

Why is the Caucasian Lime always the same?

It is a sterile hybrid, probably a single clone sent out from a nursery near Hamburg from about 1860, so every tree matches its neighbour. That is what you want in a formal screen.

What soil does it need?

Any reasonably drained soil, from mildly acidic to alkaline, in sun or partial shade.

When are the trees delivered?

Bareroot only, from November to April, while the trees are dormant. You can order at any time of year and your tree is lifted and sent once the season opens.