Welcome to the new hedges forum!

When growies make edges we get hedges!


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- Which trees make the best hedge?
- Can you make a hedge stockproof?
- What's the quickest growing hedge for privacy?

All these questions and more are discussed in our new forum.


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If you find a thread that seems to be about hedgerows that we missed, please hit the report button so we can add it here.

Do you have a hedge? Share your hedge pictures on this thread  - or start a new thread for advice and discussion on making a hedgrow to suit you.

willow fedge in winter

I'll start!
Here's one of my willow fedges in the process of being pruned. Annual pruning of a willow structure helps keep it tidy. Mine is a bit freestyle compared to the Irish examples in the first post. I planted it as a bit of a windbreak to the garden beyond, where I planted raspberries and blackcurrant bushes.

pruning willow fedge in the sunshine

I think I didn't make the structure tight enough when it was planted (didn't tie it together) and the wind here meant the willow stems didn't 'weld' together to make it really stiff. I just weave the upper growth in or cut it off every year or so. I quite like the organic forms....The clippings are mostly of a useful size for weaving or making wattle fences.

In the highways in the hedges

A hedge forum? Interesting.
I do have hedges at all-sides-but-one of my gardens (front and back). These hedges were already there long before we moved in (and that was over 20 years ago). Maybe the liguster (privet) hedge around the front garden has been planted when these houses were newly built, around 1960? It's a good dense hedge, as long as I trim it several times every year.
It's a pity it isn't 'edible'. The nice smelling white flowers and black berries won't appear with all this trimming. But now it's a good wind-break, and a hiding place for birds, insects, etc.

At the back there are hedges of some different species of conifers. These are so high, nobody can look over them ... But the neighbours living in the apartments above (mine is the ground-floor apartment), they can look in my garden. These hedges need trimming only once a year. But because they are so large, it's still a lot of work. At one side there isn't a hedge anymore, because that neighbour replaced it with a wooden fence (the kind you can't see through).
Conifer hedges may not seem fitting in permaculture, but they have the same advantages as the other hedges: birds and other creatures can hide in it. And one of the permaculture principles is: 'use what's there'... these hedges were there. :-)

Nancy Reading wrote:I'll start!
Here's one of my willow fedges in the process of being pruned. Annual pruning of a willow structure helps keep it tidy. Mine is a bit freestyle compared to the Irish examples in the first post. I planted it as a bit of a windbreak to the garden beyond, where I planted raspberries and blackcurrant bushes.

pruning willow fedge in the sunshine

I think I didn't make the structure tight enough when it was planted (didn't tie it together) and the wind here meant the willow stems didn't 'weld' together to make it really stiff. I just weave the upper growth in or cut it off every year or so. I quite like the organic forms....The clippings are mostly of a useful size for weaving or making wattle fences.

Hi Nancy thanks for this new forum, one of my favorite jobs is renovations on old overgrown hedges, often using laying as the way forward. Below are some of my future jobs as well as some that are already underway.

Beautiful! Thanks for the pictures Paul. I know who to ask now when I come to laying my (future) hedges. I'm still planting them at the moment, although I do have a hawthorne bush I'm considering trying to lay rather than planting new bushes next to it as a deer deterent. I'm a bit worried about killing it though. Also the trunk is rather thick, so I think I would need to use my saw to cut through the trunk. That and the fact I don't have a billhook...perhaps I'll use my birthday money towards a nice one.

Nancy Reading wrote:Beautiful! Thanks for the pictures Paul. I know who to ask now when I come to laying my (future) hedges. I'm still planting them at the moment, although I do have a hawthorne bush I'm considering trying to lay rather than planting new bushes next to it as a deer deterent. I'm a bit worried about killing it though. Also the trunk is rather thick, so I think I would need to use my saw to cut through the trunk. That and the fact I don't have a billhook...perhaps I'll use my birthday money towards a nice one.

Thanks Nancy, a long time back, as they say, when I was about 10, I started driving tractors around to help out on my families farm, and the old chap that my father employed showed me the art of hedge laying, at the time I was more interested in moving the brash away with the tractor, but the knowledge was in there and came to my add later when I had my own rural garden business with lots of hedges to sort out.