Bare root hedging

Hi.

I'm new to having a large garden. It's just been redone as has lovely new grass but absolutely no privacy and we are right next to a public foot way. The only thing we have is a 3ft tall wall.

Anyway, I've been looking into bare root hedging and have ordered 250 plants of a native mix. I've been preparing my garden, I've come 70cm out from the wall then have measured out a tench 60cm wide as I plan to do a double row, does that sound about right? I'm doing double row at the front and single towards the back. I'm just worried about the hedges taking up a lot of my garden but I'm assuming if we keep it trimmed back we should be ok?

 

Hello, welcome to the forum .

Is there a particular reason for having a double row at the front ? I appreciate the lack of privacy aspect, but I'm wondering if a single staggered row might be easier, depending on exactly what you are growing.
What varieties do you have coming ?

 

I think because of the size of the garden a lot of people said a double row would be beat but if I could get away with a single row would be good as a smaller trench. I've attached pictures of the area I'm covering.

 

I see what you mean about the lack of privacy !

I think a lot depends on exactly what you intend to plant. Something like laurel is fast growing and you could almost certainly get away with a single row of that (in my opinion), but I'm not sure that it is considered native.

What size plants are they ? Your distances sound OK to me, but it has been some years since I last planted a hedge.
(Also, if you could add a location to your avatar, just a general one, it may help with further advice ).

 

Sorry, I was meant to say I went native and ordered Sea Buckthorn, Wild Privet and Common Privet. I got is as a hedging pack from Hedges Direct. They are coming as 40 to 60 cm plants. I need to get digging soon as I know they really need to go into the ground asap once they arrive.

 

Sea buckthorn is great and has lovely berries (if they send both sexes) but you'll only need a single row of them! They're very robust.

 

Just to add, where I used to live the farmers started putting back hedges where they'd been grubbed out. They had small plants like yours and didn't trench, just poked holes and stuffed them in. Covered a huge distance very quickly, despite planting quite densely. Surprisingly, considering the brutal treatment, losses were low.

 

Thank you. I believe they are sending 20% each of the Sea Buckthorn and Common Privet then 50% of the Wild Privet. The gentleman on the phone told me I'd need likely 190 plants but I think he's got that a bit wrong. I'm just wondering whether I could call them as cut it down to 150 rather than 250

 

As they are pretty small, they're probably just a single unbranched stem like the ones the farmers used - they planted them about 20cm apart! And your boundary looks very long...

 

The single unbranched stems are often called whips.
Sea Buckthorn is very thorny, hence it's name; it's as tough as old boots and has been grown to stabilise sand dunes along with Marram grass.
I had a number of painful encounters with it during summer visits to Gibraltar Point near Skegness. The berries are very high in Vitamin C.

 

Thank you. Yes on the phone they told me to plant around 5-7 per metre. The boundary is long, just over 90ft. X

 

Just my thoughts but in that situation I would have gone for more formal type of evergreen hedging, something like yew.
I realise you have already made your choice.

 

Hi

what ever you plant will make it more private , just make sure don’t plant the buckthorn by a entrance , should look good in 4 to 5 years that’s the downside of planting a new hedge with small plants . Just a thought , equally space out the blackthorn when planting then infill with the privet , give it’s a formal but informal look

keep us updated plus I would keep at 250 that space is huge and will swallow them up

Spruce