Worried about the width of my Leylandiis extending over the pavement

I have a Leylandi hedge as my property border to the main street. About 40 of them!

They overhand the pavement a bit. Some of them by about a foot. A few maybe even two foot. Still room to walk past, no one has complained.

I pay a company to trim them once a year. It’s several hundred pounds and they want to charge more so I’m reluctant to trim them more than once a year.

But I’ve been worried that say they grow 3 inches out in a year but they can only be cut back 2 inches without revealing dead wood, then over the years they’ll continue to grow out over the pavement further to the point the council asks me to cut them right back which would mean to the dead wood and so lose all the nice green and have horrible dead wood as my external boundary.

Does anyone know of this can happen? Or if once a year we cut as far back as we can without revealing dead wood then it would maintain the current distance which no one complains about yet.

Does where the dead wood end and green starts ever keep moving out anyway? So no matter how often I cut it back the point the green starts is always moving out so it will always get too far over the pavement?

I don’t want to replant any we cut back it would cost loads and take years. I don’t want a fence. The green tree border is lovely in the street.

So I guess I’m just needing to know the best way to keep the start of the green from extending further out so in 5 years it’s in the same position as it is now and not covering even more of the pavement.

thanks

 

Before coming over here, I believed the given advice on Leyland and Lawson cypress never being cut back hard. Well the French don't bother with all that! I've seen hedges massacred practically back to the trunks on one side, and they do green up again. Probably more from shoots growing through from the unmassacred side, and it takes two or three years, but they do re-clothe. I think it's inevitable that your hedge will gain in width each year following the standard practice of trimming.

 

I doubt very much that it will grow back once you're down to bare wood...ours didn't. Thankfully that was all the encouragement we required to made us remove it all.

A near neighbour has is completely surrounding their property which led to a large overhang ,they were asked to cut it back to within their boundaries. They had to have the whole lot cut right back exposing bare wood. From within their garden and their own viewpoint it still looks great ...but boy is it an ugly eyesore for everyone else!!!

This was 6 years ago and there is still no sign of any regrowth. It's still a very big, tall boundary hedge but definitely not a pretty sight.

It's also a case with them that the more you trim the more it grows....so only once a year is best.

 

Care and Maintenance of Leylandii Hedges


FAQs - Leylandii


Hope these might be of help to you @Voobwm .

 

Exactly!! Once you have these is all about ' start as you mean to go on' But once they get out of hand !!!!!

We trimmed ours yearly right from when we planted them and all was good but then we mistakenly trimmed a section back( too far) to accommodate our caravan. It never re- grew. If yours is very ,very wide you might in time ( years) get the growth from the good side push it's way through to the bare side.....and get a sort of cover up job but it might not of course develop evenly so no guarantee on how good an outcome will be achieved.

 

I think hedge creep is something that happens with most hedges, even ones trimmed regularly.
Ive found it's best to use something that can take a really hard cutback every few years, and still come back good.